YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Harris

lines on the record: 37
first: 2022-12-07
most recent: 2022-12-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Countries which sprang from this common root. And one, I think the Cromwellian Revolution flowered. And in the other place, it was quietly buried by the act of oblivion and people tried to forget about it.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yes, and you know, these two characters of mine regicides, we call them. They were called the judges over there. They were the judges of the king and where they hid near New Haven is still called Judges Rock. They were heroes. Thorough went to this place. It was a sort of place of pilgrimage where people had stood against the men who had stood against tyranny in England had come to America and had survived. And there is an intersection in New Haven, the town to this day of Wallie Street and Gulf Street. They were heroes, certainly by the time of the American Civil War. They weren't regarded as villainous, murderous fugitives at all. In that sense, I think continues. They are, to a degree, honored in America in a way that they simply aren't here. So, you know, this is a fascinating thing about the history of.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in America. And so should they send a punitive expedition to deal with them? In the end, they don't do that. They want the people in America to deal with it themselves. But it must have been a momentary thought of maybe they should land soldiers there and go after them. They decide not to do it. So you can see that there is already the potential for friction there. It is embryo you can see the breakaway state there.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would say yes, quite a lot. In particular, these militia that Wally and Goff drilled at New Haven, they would have reminded Wally in particular of the new model army. They were tradesmen, farmers, amateurs, but zealots and good fighters. And I think that when he sees them, he thinks these are exactly the men who I looked at in Huntingdon when I was with Cromwell and we were building the ironsides. So I think that, yes, that is, you can see in that the beginnings of a country that is going to shape its own destiny. And I dramatize the register subcommittee. They realize that Wally and Goff have been allowed to live at liberty for six months or so, completely, really unhampered.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Civil War where the kind of deep fissures still persist to some degree today. That didn't happen. So the act of oblivion was a very successful piece of truth and reconciliation legislation and stood the test of time very well.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, no, I don't think that I do. Obviously, I give a slightly distorted picture because I'm dealing with the bloodlust and the determination to avenge the murder or the execution, to use a less loaded phrase, of Charles I. And so this was the safety valve. This is where the cavaliers could vent, if you like, it was in getting these guys. Given that my book concentrates on that, maybe that gives you a distorted sense because the truth of the matter is apart from the rising of fifth monarchist men in January 1661, there wasn't really the kind of republic melted away into nothing. And the legislation worked. The act of oblivion worked. People forgot about the war very largely and got on with their lives in a quite remarkable sense, actually. I mean, say compared to the aftermath of the American.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This case obviously, Naylor is the man who comes over. I mentioned earlier the way that one sees a shadowy figure, there was a shadowy figure who brought over the warren from Charles II and gave it to Governor Endicott in Boston. I think his name is Foster it's given. Well, that was a rather boring name, so I didn't use that. But someone came over from London to kind of organise this hunt and make sure that they did go after them and they did go after them, both in Massachusetts and in Connecticut. The only place where they didn't really was in New Haven, which is the reason there is no state of New Haven today. They were not given a royal charter and their land was mostly given over to Connecticut.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the truth is that the parts in my novel that I where the registries hide are ipso facto, the parts where they expected the best welcome. And they were, especially at the beginning, hostile to the monarchy. They had very close links with the Commonwealth and with Cromwell personally. And so it was a shock to them when Wally and Goff turned up with the news that England had got a king again. And so they were shielded, but quite quickly the Cannie governors of Massachusetts and of Connecticut realized that the king wasn't going away and that there wasn't going to be a return to the republic. And so they didn't protect Waling Gough. They started to cooperate with the men on their trail.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Superstition and the haunting sense of living on the edge of civilization and the utter darkness and silence, especially in the winters. It's a miracle. I mean, you would go mad. I mean, I think a lot of people did effectively go mad.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of almost Bible in one hand, gun in the other, independence, and the strict kind of morality that you see, as well as in the obvious commercial taxation stream as well. Yes, the book is about Britain and America, and it was interesting to me that, I mean, at the time I'm writing the novelist said there were 30,000 settlers in New England and an awful lot of them, probably a majority, were religious, really, exiles. And only if you stopped, the books that I read about this whole period, only people with an enormous faith in God and that they were doing God's work would have been able to endure those conditions, would have been able to go and really walk into the middle of nowhere and build houses and survive these long winters. Bitterly cold. I mean, extraordinary feat that did require faith, religious faith, I think.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't trying to highlight them. I was, though, fascinated, as I say, by the extent to which the Puritan Revolution is in the DNA of modern America and that actually the seeds of the American War of Independence are sown in these militias, in these Puritan towns, in this sort of”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Years before the French cut off the head of their king 250 years before the Russians did it. And we've seen it work this autumn, where at a time of great political turmoil in this country and some, you know, unhappiness and misery, I think the monarchy did its duty and we passed from the hugely long reign of the queen into the reign of the king quite seamlessly and it did give a sense of continuity at a time when this country has been rather in a headspin. I never thought I'd say that either. I mean, I thought when I was younger, I thought obviously Republicanism would be the way to go. But right at the end of his life, I had a conversation with Eric Hobsport, and I remember him telling with the great Marxist historian, and I remember him saying to me that the best countries to live in were constitutional monarchists because they offer the best guarantee of freedom. He thought, if you looked around the world.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that's it. I mean, I don't think the book comes down on any particular side. I mean, I don't think it's a very attractive portrait of either King Charles or of the Duke of York or of the royalist regime. And there's no doubt that Cromwell was a great man. I mean, it was wonderful to write Cromwell in a novel, this overpowering, extraordinary military genius and really administrative genius as well. So, you know, we needed Cromwell. Probably this country was something we had to go through and he remains of towering figures. So I don't know that it's as simple as just saying which side you come down. I think at this gap in time, we can just say that this is what forged us. And it was a happy chance, really, for this country that we did get this balance, a form of balance between crown and parliament. 150.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I don't go into this in the novel because it simply would have gone on forever. But both Wally and Goff were two of the major generals who ran the country, the ten major generals, and they each had their own military district. And a lot of their correspondence survives to Thurlough, the Secretary of State, who was Cromwell's secretary. And you can see all the time that they're not popular and they know they're not popular and the revolution isn't popular. And people just don't like it. It really is very interesting to do a deep dive into that time.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Men who changed the world. Nevertheless, I think that they were working against the grain of human nature. So I'm a cavalier and I certainly dislike the military, what effectively it was a military coup when Charles has put on trial and the parliament was, they were only able to do it because they excluded so many members of parliament who would have voted against a trial. And that whole that show trial of Charles I seems to me a little better than a Stalinist show trial, actually. Here is definitely where I part company with the round heads. Not that I don't think that Charles didn't get what he deserved in a way, but I dislike the methods of Cromwell and the hard men of the army.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is a very good question. If you'd ask me before I really started the book, I'd have said I was around head without question. And I would have probably been a moderate parliamentarian, I think is the truth. I'm not a Puritan. I mean, my instincts, this may just be because I was born in the 20th century. My instincts are cavalier. And I detest religious fervor. And I particularly detest religious intolerance where people try to tell other people how they should live their lives. So, you know, if anything now, I finish the book thinking I was a cavalier. I think this is one of the reasons why NATO is a more sympathetic character. And I do think that the Puritan Revolution, although I can see Carlyle's point that this was the greatest generation to ever walk in British on British. So these were sin.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't say that, but I think it is quite good to live with someone else's writing because they can sort of understand the stresses and strains of it. And also she's very good judge. And so, you know, if I hit a question, I mean, in this novel, for instance, it was just how much of a balance I should give to the memoir. Did it slow the story up rather to go back to the Civil War? In the end, I'm sure now, absolutely sure that the right answer was to put in the memoir and to put it in at length. And Paddock, maybe I should have put more in. That sort of thing is very useful to have someone who knows about writing who you can discuss it with. And yeah, it's great. I'm very proud of the fact that. She's made her way through now with her own books, especially recently the ones about Jane Austen.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shells behind me. I've written 14 novels in this room. And it's a great pleasure, really. It's the delight of my life. There's nothing, no one is luckier than the person who can do for a living the thing that they would choose to do with their leisure. So, you know, it's no, I mean, obviously it's hard work. I mean, I can't say they're writing this book was easy, but it never ceased to be interesting. And I just love finding new periods and inventing new characters and finding new ways of trying to bring these periods alive.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I've kind of got two ideas, really. One contemporary and one historical, and at the moment, I'm slightly favoring the historical one. And I don't think, to be honest, I can really write it in six months. this novel which is long, really the longest novel I ever wrote was the novel about the Dreyfus affair, an officer and a spy. But this runs it quite close. And I don't think I'll be bringing out a book next year. Unfortunately, I love bringing out books. So I think it'll take me a bit longer. Yes, it was every day I write the book came out at around the time just when I met my wife. And so it became our kind of song that I was never around. I was just endlessly writing books. And I've gone on pretty well doing that. And, you know, it's great. And we moved after my first novel came out to this old vicarage gothic, Victorian Gothic Vicarage. You can see the books.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The printing press and the ability of people to write books and to explain themselves, to fight through the media of print is very, very powerful and vivid. And this doesn't happen earlier. And I was very pleased to write a novel that got away from the Tudors. I don't want to say anything against Henry VIII and the wives and the rest of it. But, you know, you do feel like, you know, we now know that. English Civil War is. Yourself, it's been the last two years a kind of golden period for books about the Civil War. I can see Devil Island behind you, which won the Wolfson Prizes.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I suppose nowadays a ruin politician goes into the jungle and eats Campbell's penises, although it's quite hard. Mind you, by the look of him, Clarendon would have eaten virtually anything. And of course his memoirs are wonderful, beautiful, a masterpiece of that prose of that period. Yes, I have, I mean, all politicians these days write self-justifying memoirs, and he was just one of the very first to do so. And this is another thing. I mean, I know every historian of a period goes on and on and on about how their period is the one that really shapes the world. So, you know, let's make allowance for that. But as a non-expert in the 17th century, I was astonished by how much of our modern world arises at this time in the crucible of the Civil War and that struggle in particular.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where Cromwell closed down Parliament and made himself Lord Protector is one of the most dramatic scenes in English political history. And it made me think again, why on earth does Cromwell statues stand outside the houses of Parliament as no one treated Parliament with quite the contempt that Cromwell did?”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this put him, he must have been slightly at odds with his father in law because while he was the custodian of the king for eight months, it was on Wallie's watch that Charles I escaped from Hampton Court. So Wallie was a great character for me. He both knew the king, probably better than any other parliamentary commander in the war, and he knew Cromwell intimately. And it seemed to me natural that in the years of hiding in America he would write his memoirs because men like Ludlow, they did write their memoirs and Clarendon from the other side, of course. This was an age of autobiography. And so I was able to smuggle in the story of the Civil War, in particular Cromwell and Charles I. Through this memoir, it enabled me to sort of pick out the parts of the Civil War that interested me. And in a way, if you ask me what scenes I most enjoyed writing, well, I think that actually this...”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Law, William Goff, a very different man about 17 years, his junior. He was a Hellfire preacher, spoke at the Partney Debates and at Saffron Walden and the Army Council, but he had visions and he believed that God had said to him this and the other, we mustn't deal with the king.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wally is in real, was a moderate. I mean, he was from a well to do Nottinghamshire family, had fallen on hard times, the father had lost all the money and had indeed borrowed money off Oliver Cromwell's father, £600 fortune in those days, which he never repaid. And Wallie, we know, was a moderate. He was a fancy dresser. He was a failed merchant and farmer, joined up with his cousin when Cromwell raised his first regiment and commanded a troop of the cavalry and rose with Cromwell to become, in fact, in the campaign against the Scots, he was Commissar General of Commissary General of Horse. So an important man, he opposed Cromwell's punitive expedition to Ireland. I was very glad when I discussed that. He did not believe in the treatment the way that the army treated the Catholics. So he was a more sympathetic character. His son in”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did have a lot of, there were a lot of good scenes in it. I mean, the things that we know are true. We know that they had to hide in the open when it became too dangerous to shield them when about 400 English soldiers arrived and started looking for them. And they had to hide in caves and try and survive. I found it quite interesting because they traveled and picked up Indian ways of surviving in the open. They used those and they turn into these two Puritan gentlemen, kind of almost wild men. That was interesting to write. And as you say, at the end of the book,”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We live in the shadow of this time. And when the new king, Charles III, acceded to the throne, I think a lot of people who saw the events of that weekend, do you remember when we saw the Privy Council for the first time and the swearing in and then all the language of that and about the Church of Scotland and defending that? And you really heard the language of the 17th century and you realized that this is really where our Constitution is forged.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hill with a mission for the rest of the world. The importance of the Bible still and religious belief in American politics, as you say, the debate on abortion, which is mercifully never really become a contentious political issue here, for example. America What other country would have prohibition? This is very much part of the novel. And Wally and Goff, when they get to New Haven, drill the militia because they're such senior army officers. And it's on record that Wallie said out loud, if I had 200 such men of these, we need have no fear of the king. So a century before the war of independence, you have this Puritan colonel already wondering if they could take on the king's army. So all that is very important, very relevant.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, very much so. I didn't set out really. I mean, I thought that Hilary Mantel, the great, late Hilary Mantel, put it very well, that it's very important if you're a historical novelist, not to just try and twist the past to make an allegory of the present. You really don't have to do that with this period, as you say, because so much of the modern world is born around this time in America. It quickly became apparent to me that the Puritan Revolution, the Cromwellian Revolution, failed in England and was dispatched almost as if it never was. But in America, it took hold. I mean, it was full of Cromwellians and Puritans. It harbored these two men on the run. And in many ways, this is the founding DNA of America. This sense of being special, of being God's kingdom, the shining city on the head.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reasons, I think, why in a funny way the Civil War for all its drama and importance to the way we live now has not penetrated popular culture in the way that say the Judas have, which is odd because the cast of characters is extraordinary. I think it is because the Puritans who really come to dominate the parliamentary side through the army are so unsympathetic actually and hard to take. And it's so much religion in the story and religion's fundamentalism and Naylor can't stand that. And to be perfectly honest, I found it pretty difficult myself. And one of the most technically hard tasks in writing the novel was to make these two Puritan kernels sympathetic in some way. You know, they read the Bible twice a day and so on. Every letter that we have that they wrote is laced with biblical quotations. This is really hardcore religion.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't give him gonorrhea in that sense. I couldn't believe it when I was doing my research and I discovered that he does indeed. He only had one child, which was very unusual for that era. His wife only had one pregnancy. And actually, he was being treated for gonorrhea. So he falls into the absolute classic category of the tub-something Bible wielding preacher who has feet of clay. And one of the things about the book, and one of the reasons I think one does feel sympathetic for Naylor is he can't stand the Puritans. He can't stand these people who won't let you go to the theatre or celebrate Christmas. He detests them, which I think a lot of people did actually.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Civil War in a neutral way without taking a particular side. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to let the story tell it.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am that man. And so they go off, and he gets to death warrant. And this is the beginning of Naylor. And I worked out that really he would, the place where he would probably have been would have been on the subcommittee. There were various subcommittees of the Privy Council, one dealing with the regicides. And I imagined him to be the clerk or the secretary to this committee. He had been a loyalist to the king during the interregnum, and this was his reward. He was offered a job, and this is the one he took because he had a particular animus, especially against Wally and Goff. And he keeps an eye out for them. So, you know, it's interesting in a novel. You follow people who are active and you become interested in them. So you're interested in alternate chapters in the two men trying to get away and in the ingenuity, I hope, of the man who's trying to hunt them down. And it enabled me to tell the story of...”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, I came to like him a lot too. I tried to give him very interesting creating this character, which is where the book really started. I thought, well, who would have gone after these registries? We don't know who it was. There were a couple of glimpses shadows in the sources. Astonishingly, the death warrant was kept by the man to whom Cromwell gave it, Colonel Hacker, who kept it in his country house in Leicestershire. When he was arrested in 1660, the house was beaten up and he confessed that he had the death warrant in the hope that it would get him off, actually, because he hadn't signed it. His wife was ordered by the House of Lords. He was in the Tower of London. His wife was told to go and fetch it. And the actual official record says, and a man was sent with her for that purpose. And in the novel, Naylor introduces himself at the very beginning and says to her,”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was the ultra religious community founded on the principles of mosaic law. And it was there that they again started to live openly. And these Puritan communities fascinated me. And the whole process, the whole procedure of trying to stay alive on the trail and then in these tiny towns where eventually they ended up hiding in barns and in cellars and attics. fascinating me and really forms the spine of the book. It's a survival story essentially.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“America, and they lived there for a few months, they were recognized when they ventured into Boston. And that was, Boston had far more royalists and far, I was less of a Puritan community than Cambridge. Eventually Cambridge, once the warrant for their arrest arrived, they had to get out because even Endicott couldn't daren't defy the king completely. So in the depths of winter in February, they fled to Connecticut, to the Connecticut River. Almost certainly they went on foot. Wally was by this time 60 years old. It can't have been an easy journey along this winding path for the best part of 100 miles. And then they went south from Connecticut, the governor there did not want to harbor them. He was scared. The one place where they were given a warm welcome was New Haven.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They arrived in New England after a voyage of about three months on the 27th of July 1660. They went first to see the governor of Massachusetts, John Endicott, who welcomed them, really. And they, at this time, I don't think any, well, first of all, the king, they brought news on the ship that the king had returned. In fact, he hadn't quite returned when they fled. So I think there was a general feeling that, you know, God will soon get rid of this terrible usurper, Charles, and all will go back to normal. So they were kind of welcome. They were both colonels in the new model army. And Wallie had been Cromwell's cousin. So these were serious. These were the most senior men ever to visit America. They were treated as honored guests. They went to stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where extraordinarily Harvard College had already been built. Must have been about the finest building.”
2022-12-07 · Intelligence Squared · The Death of a Monarch and a Divided Nation, with Robert Harris · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT