A Cicerone to Cicero: Robert Harris in conversation

I feel like I'm at a tutorial which I'm prepared especially warm welcome of course to to Robert Harris guest this evening a reviewer said of Roberts Cicero trilogy Harris has taken the DNA of Cicero's great speeches and animated them with utterly believable dial his greatest triumph is perhaps in the irritation of Roman politics the constant bending of ancient principles before the realities of power I would take my hat off to Harris if I hadn't already dashed it to the ground in jealous or the reviewer was of course Boris never abandon midsi's words Robert you make no bones about you're interested in politics when did it all begin oh I've been interested in politics all my life with a rather famous family story that my parents went when I was 6 years old to the parents evening at my infant school and everyone else had written a little piece of work about where they've been on holiday or their pet and I'd written something called why me and my dad don't like Sir Alec douglas-home and in a way I've done on writing that ever since indeed I actually finally got Alec Douglas in was a character in my latest novel so I've really come full circle so a lifelong interest in politics it was our football in a way I think at home and my father was really fascinated by it and so I just grew up in it and I have seen it as a way I put a lot of things of my own thoughts about it and into these books Cicero says at one point his sister-in-law I think doesn't like politics she thinks it's boring boring this thing that is such a mirror to humanity that shows us that our best and our worst the most noble and the most cowardly and deceitful how could she call it boring and I've always felt that I mean just the events of the last 24 hours in here you may say whatever you like but it's not boring Boris is still foreign secretary yes well but were there any classical influences in your youth I mean did you yeah did you look at I Claudius oh we've married read or read all of it Robert read English at Cambridge do you read always metamorphoses classical I did I was loved Rosalie succulent foreign I was a child in the Eagle of the ninth and those sorts of books and yes I Claudius I did watch that and it was an influence a brilliant piece of work not least because Jack Pullman who adapted the books if you read the books which is wonderful but there's hardly any dialogue in them they're just page after page of paragraph after paragraph and Pullman just turned them into you know plays really and what I also admired about them was they it seemed to me I mean you may correct me but it said to me that grace as a scholar it was accurate actually he dramatized it but it was accurate and I tried in the Cicero books to bear in mind that it would be useful to stick to the facts as far as possible so that someone like me at the age of 15 or 16 would would get that sense of learning and knowing what the world was like that was that was important to me I didn't want to make things up if the reality was so much better than anything one could and then I think right about I Claudius it gave her since that desperado maceió world but I'd be where did where did pump a come from I mean that's but you didn't do it at school it suddenly bang Pompey yes well it was a bit of a shock to my publishers I have to say three books set in the Second World War and they were fondly expecting my next book to be set in a kind of futuristic America I wanted to write a novel I'd written fatherland about Germany and enigma about England and Archangel about Russia and I thought now I should write like to write a novel about America and this is sort of 1998-99 and I hit upon what I thought was a good idea a novel that imagined the Walt Disney Company had taken over the world like a nightmare dystopia back to Walt Disney World about 18 months on this and I went and he crashed in my hands I went to Walt Disney World and checked into the Grand Floridian hotel and a couple came across the lobby while I was there and he the man was wearing a black tuxedo with black silk Mickey Mouse ears and with him was a woman wearing a white silk wedding dress with white silk Mickey Mouse ears and I said to the receptionist what's this and she said oh they're on their way to get married on the platform overlooking Sleeping Beauty's castle so I said does this happen often she said it happens every 30 minutes so I thought at that point there's no way that I could possibly satirize this is what feeble resources do I have so I returned home and this was now the summer of 2000 and I remember very clearly sitting slightly despondent at my desk and there was an article in The Daily Telegraph new research on the destruction of Pompeii was the headline and I stopped I just started reading the story and it said contrary to what we've all thought there wasn't just some great bang that there was you know the eruption began at lunchtime and went on through the night into the following morning there were warning signs before and I've suddenly thought the ideas that had had about writing this novel about a kind of utopia under threat in America I could transfer it to Rome I could make Roman allegory for the modern world and and wrote and Pompeii could stand in for my celebration Florida Town town and really it was that was my initial thought and then I went to Pompeii thinking that this was crazy and actually who could possibly write a novel in tankers and all the rest of it was mad and up Pompeii you know this over the whole thing from the start Primus stove and all those games but you know I walked it was August 2000 and I walked through the center of Pompeii and you know you that shopping street sort of thing and then turned right walk up the hill and there was a Vesuvius against this azure blue sky the great outline of the series and this heat on my back that August day and then I smelled water drying on stone somewhere and I went in search of it and found where the aqueduct came into the town and I thought if the town lost its water supply that would be a warning that something was going to happen maybe I could write a new sort of novel about Rome about the man who the water in this town because engineers don't change you know the Roman engineer would have been similar to a Victorian engineer or a modern engineer this would be something away from priests and gladiators and emperors and that's that's how I started I came back I went to the Ashmolean library Jasper Jasper Griffin Simon yeah and it was it was just marvelous the plot itself was more than you know just this aqueduct folding up over there there was a villain Amplio villain and of course I took the names from people in the town and the artists a freed slave who obviously roasted the very rich because he paid for the Temple of Isis and his sons were on the council they did sort of because there's a freed slave he couldn't he wasn't a full citizen but his sons could be and immediately there was this I saw that character you know I'm sure he wasn't an evil villain in the way that I made I followed the eyes to the shade of angry artists but then of course the fact that Lenny was stationed at the end of my senior at the end of this aqueduct as the rest of it was just a gift took a long time to reserve and my publisher was a little bit alarmed when I said listen I'm going to write a novel about Pompeii and she said oh my god and I we were having lunch in there for Cliff Lee froze on the way and she said who were the characters and I said well Pliny the Elder and she said can we at least make him Pliny the Younger yes and aptly Arthas as a villain who's getting who's paying off one of the the previous active aqueducts engineer to get cheap water for Pompeii isn't he in order to may take his his grip on the on the yes that's right and he's here yes and you know he owns the villa hortensis Hortensia which or Tennessee has had you know where they kept the fish and so that gave me the opening scene where eels and water stopped flowing you know it became he's a sort of Roman techno-thriller burly and I I the bony the main protect a problem I had with a novel was that I couldn't the Romans didn't know what a volcano was so I had to him that comes from Vulcan with a God but they did so I wrote the novel and and I thought how do I tell people what's happening in the volcano so what I did was I could at the beginning of each chapter a real quotation from geologists about what would be going on in the volcano at that time and what actually happened and it transformed the book immediately it casted all conversations in an ironic light all scenes and of course this was like Greek tragedy it it had that effect of the volcano became like with God and all these earth little mortals running around underneath it it was a most marvelous experience writing that last chapter where you go into detail very accurate detail about the pyroclastic flow or what was really absolutely tremendous what a cataclysm joined the normal and of course the hero does manage to get away with the girl well I mean you cite the enormous amount of reading I think 2026 its major scholarly tones or that was rife with footnote disease and stray bird Senate digesting that would be difficult enough the thing that was most difficult it's sort of getting a grip on the rodent world it was just doing all that weed it doesn't give you a real sense it really allowed you to get a grip on the room you have you already got there well I went and spent a lot of time there I love in all my books to have a sense of place and geography I like where people would sit and walk and what it smelled like and what them you know the terrain and and I loved constructing a world and fatherland or the huts of Bletchley Park or it was wonderful in this new novel Munich to go round down and read after hours and to go to weather conference took place today at his apartment so so that was important to me and I went several times in the spring or you know the Ralph january/february time when it's deserted it's the most haunting place anyone who's never been to Pompeii it's it's one of those places you go and it does subtly change you I think in some way it's so atmospheric so that was quite important and that's you know just so I could see whose house was where and you know the people begin to come alive in your mind I think that that would that was important only Aqueduct itself the root of it and the technology of it and I just love the sense of this I mean I became obsessed with strange things like the hydraulic cement there's a most extraordinary book about it by an American civil who was being dragged who retired and was being dragged down Europe by his wife and finally by himself stuck in Rome seeing all these wretched art treasures and then they went into the party and he looked up at the dough he looked up again and then he said we couldn't build this today and he started to try and work out how the Romans had done it and we still don't really know except that they the way that they pounded this this cement on the on the on the Bay of Naples pretty early changed they planted it so hard and made that made the cement so dry that he altered them in a molecular structure in a way that they didn't do again until the 20th century women didn't develop something called can decks to build the Hoover Dam so the Roman technology 2,000 years ago it took us all that time to rediscover it again those sorts of details I think it's important to have a sense of or reverence for the past not to mock it not to think you're superior to it one of the great things about writing about the ancient world is I don't think one feels ever superior to that world its superior into ours in many ways what was interesting about that Pompeii was that the hero is an engineer you know he's not a consul he's not a rich person he's an engineer and these sort of are the unspoken heroes in a sense of the Roman world I mean from tirelessly bloke who ran the aqueducts who looked after the aqueducts of Rome for 15-20 years said look at all the pyramids look at all the wonderful Greek temples yes they're marks but none of them are a patch on Roman aqueducts so I thought that was a connection to make an engineer the hero the story it's not sort of what you expect would you expect in a road not yes really works I remember they've got a great review in the New York Times Book Review in famous on the cover of the only time I ever have this that was the cover with an illustration and the headline was Roman art question mark no Harris is more interesting than plumbing the illustration was bending over a manhole cover you know every generation reinterprets the ancient world I mean Buller Lydon his debar Pompeii the last days of Pompeii was the greatest best-seller of the 19th century it went into 34 35 editions there were three four stage versions running at the time he's only interested in Christianity and paganism and so on it's our generation you know they're more interested in the threat of nature and our and engineer and similarly with Pompeii what was so strange is that no one had ever asked before why it was that all the bodies were found eight feet above the ground every skeleton was eight feet above street level but literally no one as I as far as I understand it they never said well how could that be I mean how did everyone and only out only in the after the eruption of Mount st. Helens did we understand about prior plastic frozen at this city would slowly filled up with pumice which is the new research that was referred to in that pain let's turn to the sister of Ruchi now Cicero we're gonna have some Latin now so get a grip Cicero asked what history would make of of his times in six hundred years and then he went on to say I fear history's verdict much more than they than the tittle-tattle of our contemporary world sensitive quit where Oh his story I they know be add a dose DC vs. kento's pride account coifs puddin ego multum maggots wearing Kwan a Orem hominem qui ha da we want rule screw loose musculoskeletal rumors the tittle-tattle the only one says Latin is such an economic language maybe not contemporary rumors we were translated Latin for contemporary or a qui ha da we weren't men who lived today as well so I mean what drew you to sister and Shakespeare didn't make much of it the formidable German fascist is Theodor Mommsen of the 19th century accused him of just being a newspaper journalist schoolboys reading Cicero's speech well I've earned my living after the my early brush with Sir Alec douglas-home as a political journalist I was political editor the observer and then I wrote a political column for The Sunday Times and I'd always wanted to write a political novel but I'd then put off really on the on the white silk Mickey Mouse ears principle that there was nothing I could write about an invented politician which will be more absurd and outlandish than the ones that actually existed why invent a president when at that time you had George Bush or a prime minister when one had Tony Blair or Berlusconi and so I sort of and I didn't like novels that have you know the scheming chief whip and the affair with above the Secretary of Agriculture all that sauce and it would just seem earthbound but then I'd so enjoyed writing Pompeii that just as I finished it I would send a proof copy of Tom Hollands book rubican and which I read and thoroughly enjoyed and I suddenly thought my god look here at one time possibly even in the same room you could have had Cicero Cato Caesar Pompey Crassus Claudius all of them and this is the most extraordinary Alexeyev political talent until perhaps the American Revolution and I thought they would write a political novel about this use these people and also as I had with the aqueducts with Pompeii how did the political mechanism of Rome worked because most people had done gladiators and emperors and so on but in the Republic how did it function how did you stand for office what was the process how often were the elections how did you speak to it into six hundred senators how did you speak to two or three thousand in the forum without benefit of amplification how did the whole thing and the law and all work together so I set out to do that and the moment I set out on that road then Cicero became the obvious character to put at the center of it because in many ways he was the almost the first professional politician who approached it with a deliberate aim to achieve political glory not on the battlefield not through inherited wealth but purely by writing through the locals and that made him a modern figure and and so I started working really for two years I did nothing but research until in the end or the trilogy itself that runs for about four hundred thousand words the three broadened but the nodes for it runs well 600,000 all of them typed it because for me the lived experience of writing a novel I has to be the research I've never employed a researcher I do it all myself and so a lot of the things I don't ever put in the book but I know them or not I mean I've processed them all and it's time-consuming but it's in those connections then that you start to see how the whole book and work well this mediately segues effortlessly onto another big question about the you know what's your handle on historical fiction now Hillary amount of tell is you know has just given given her her recent lectures on this various and Justins make one or two report ones your comments mantle on this particular subject writer should claim they're doing research when they mean they are skimming facts out of pre-existing text but unless they're also trained historians novelists mostly don't have the skills for original research from primary sources one and then she also says the novelist is after a type of knowledge that goes beyond the academic well I don't know where she would have got the information to write Wolf Hall if she hasn't read academic books so I mean I disagree with her she never sites or acknowledges historians other works in her books I see if everything had come out of her acting obviously this isn't the case so I I've always been careful to cite historians and scholars whose work I've used because I think that's only fair and proper and also because I hope that those books might you know readers might then go on to read the sources that I have used I have done original research for novels in archive enigma in particular I read all the intercepts and so on at the public record office that are in that book I interviewed codebreakers Alan Turing's fiance for instance people now dead Stuart Mill nebari and Harry Hensley so I did do primary search for that book I think that the the function of other historical novelist is to go to places that a scholar cannot they are barred from entering realms of speculation imaginary conversations domestic details and the job of a fiction writer you can switch on lights batteries of searchlights of imagination that that are not available to a scholar but I would never ever belittle scholarship because without that I wouldn't be able to to write the book in the first place well I think to my way of thinking it's the particularity of a moment that brings history to life and I think it's your capacity to particular eyes these conversations these moments these issues because a lead on the world and be you've bought this in wonderfully inventive imagination to it but actually makes it comes up come alive so I think your work is there's a sense in which a work it is academic which leads on for the next obvious question how did a caddy respond to it I mean I mean all academics especially classicists we're we're very jealous of our little patch and there are the tiger sharks slowly circling looking for whom they may disemboweled yes actually we're all gathered here because we have a passion for the classics and believe it's important in our civil and culture perhaps as never before that we remind ourselves about what happened in the past and also open up that treasure of of the literature and the history and the architecture all the rest of it of that period but it's it's a battle hence the fact that has to be a charity here doing what you would have hoped actually the government would do but you know we have to do it and therefore most academics are only too pleased that one is popularizing the subject or doing something to help bring people into it so on the whole the response has been generous there have been one or two carping critics who see you know who seem to think that I'm you know trying to write scholarly works well of course I'm not I'm writing for a large audience I'm not dumbing down the books I write the books they're content as you say could technically detailed books but nevertheless they they reach a large audience and most academics seem pleased by that Tom Holland one of our patrons reviewed the system of one of the books in Cicero trilogy and made the point you made earlier on that Cicero unlike the aristocrats who customer and secured power in the Republic Cicero was upon with no family tradition of Imperium to draw upon and few other resources safe for the spellbinding power of his oratory well this is a question that is always raised about Cicero is rhetoric a dead well Ciceronian style rhetoric is dead that was the main means of political communication to the masses in the ancient world where are we now what sort of what sort of persuasive powers are open to us now what some persuasion politicians these days well normally to be honest our tape ident I don't like this view that things were so much better years ago you know I think it's it's a it's a besetting kind of see to think that but on the issue of political debate and its standard and oratory I think it's uncontestable that we're living in a terrible era of political discourse I mean you know just so to keep mentioning Munich I only imagine occurs in my mind The Times reports on the debates in Parliament would be two full pages of a big newspaper thin columns no pictures you know the full debate is there I mean you know we just don't have that anymore we don't we don't we don't debate things in that detail I mean the more one looks back at that referendum on Europe whether whichever side I'm not making a point about who won but the standard of defend the quality of knowledge imparted to people how well-informed people were it was pretty pitiful when you look back on it and the great days of speeches in the House of Commons when people would hurry in to hear foot you know power you know anyone like that those have gone as far as I can see and you know and I don't think we're better off for it in my view I mean you can argue the other way that you had this great glittering array of talent in the Senate Caesar Cicero Cato and all the rest of it and what did they do them they blew the place up so you know I mean I can see you can even argue it the other way but I mean those speeches of cicero's are their masterpieces I mean and they're funny still and they're still moving and they're still sharp and brilliant and clever and you can see the tricks he uses I mean it was a delight to go through them all and one of the things that I did realize when I came to the philippics in the final volume was how much Churchill must have drawn on Cicero in in 1940 because the speeches that were made by Cicero against Mark Antony we mustn't even talk peace terms with him and then at one point Cicero actually says if the Roman Republic is to end let it end when were all of us as lying choking on the ground in our own blood well those exact words were used by Churchill to the cabinet soon after he took power in 1940 so when people say who was Cicero like I think he was very much like Churchill with it obviously it wasn't fascinated by war in the way that Churchill was but he he was a similar sort of character witty people collected his jokes he was a life enhancer he was vain and he was often wrong and so on but people I sort of liked hanging around him and I think and he also had this relentless work ethic I mean that he would pack in two days into normal two working days into one I hope you adult me I must tell a personal reminiscence of Enoch Powell there's an example of ancient rhetoric in 1989 Kenneth Baker's National Curriculum threatened to destroy the teaching of classics in state schools and we invited Enoch after he lost his seat in Southdown to come up to Newcastle University where I was teaching to talk about the National Curriculum and in the car we picked him up in Chester drove in the car I said - I said to Enoch we're trying to persuade MPs to help us how should we set about doing this and and I word-for-word this is the virtue of great rhetoric his reply he turned to me with his cold blue eyes and such as Esther and he said never write to mp's on his note paper there are no votes in Haiti never write to MP's from business addresses there are no votes in business of dresses never write to AP's on IBM typewriters there are no votes in IBM there we have the tricone on three legs with with repetition there was then a pause and he said letters and please fear more than any up a written in buyer on blue line note paper with no margins so how not to do it how to do it with a little triplet at the end and then the conclusion in such letters are their votes a trip to the game a large lot to do how to do it and the reason why and that just came out just like that quite extraordinary and utterly was asked how he how he wanted this haircut by the hairdresser you sit in silence [Laughter] but joke I have to say first found in Utah to serious colony when Caesar was stabbed to death we all know what he said as almost his last words and too brutal as Marcus Brutus came up and stabbed yet dictator we've all outraged when Cicero's words were the equivalent of Ed to decals or deca man it's deca mmus Brutus who stabs him to death well I think that it's nice to do it a slightly different twist on very familiar scenes and the I was worried about writing the assassination of Caesar given it such a familiar episode but to tell it from Cicero's point of view in the audience and the throne carried in taken out again and so on I mean let's face it Caesar or Marcellus didn't say anything at all if you're stabbed 32 times we're not making a lot of sense particularly getting the right now.you moment so on what is what is the case is that the I don't think having worked my way through it I don't think the presence of the famous Brutus would be the one that shocked him in the assassins he would probably have expected it if he was anyone was going to stab him it would be him what would have shocked him completely is this almost adopted son desmos who who had built the fleet that defended britain and conquered brittany and who he who he actually left money to him probably to in his will and he was the man who when Caesar refused to come due to the Senate when was sent by the conspirators to say come on you've got to come because otherwise people are going to say you're ill so he persuaded him to come so if he was going to say and identically said it to anybody but he was going to say if he was gonna be outraged to anyone it would have been to that Brutus rather than the other Brutus in my view be a professor I've had a nightmare that I'd be sitting here and it would turn into a kind of vibe could you say something we come to the end of our time with less could you say something about the RSC before so as you know Cicero is now going to be a play at the RSC opening well not just one play yes well it's about two years ago that Greg Doran the artistic director of the I see got in touch with me and said that he wanted they were doing a road season in 2017 and he wanted to do the Cataline conspiracy but the Ben Jonson play was um Performa below in any way as a Cicero speech to the last 22 minutes it was completely impossible so he said but I and I but I like your books and do you think we could do what we did with Wolf Hall and and adapted from the stage so of course I pretended played hard to get not for a second and he said do you want to do it and I very wisely said no I don't think I can because I wanted to write Conclave and dictator so Mike Bolton had already met who adapted Wolf Hall Kane came on board and so then it was a matter of how did one turn this four hundred thousand words into anything that would work on the stage and eventually although the the the double bill is called Imperium actually it really starts with lustrum and which with Cicero becoming consul and I think Mike's done a brilliant job of tracing the arc of Cicero's career and really the two plays cover the left the second two books and Greg had a very good idea because material so huge and intractable of making really each evening three plays three one-hour plays so it's so the first one is Cicero then Cataline and then Claudius that's the first evening and then the second one is Caesar Mark Antony Octavius so each play is grouped around that figure in Cicero's life and you know I hope it's going to be great the the they've taken up the stage taken out the stage of this one theater and I'm making it so the audience is as if they're in the forum and the this the floor lifts and people enter up staircases and I mean I think it will it's the most revolutionary staging they've done at the RSC so it's it's very thrilling and I you know it's it's wonderful to see you know your work take on this other form and it's likely and hopefully that also it will be a and I Claudius like TV series so that's also the first episode of that has been written so Cicero having been rubbished by mom soon ignored by Shakespeare I hope will finally take his place because I CC and Caesar as the two great Romans one of whom conquered the West as Munson said took France and Britain into the orbit of Rome and as Britain then took America as well so the world was changed by Caesar in his conquest and and Cicero really provided the literature and the philosophy and really the discovery of his letters kick-started the Renaissance so that it's good that's to try to do something to restore Cicero in popular culture been so dominated by Caesar good if you were running classes for what would be your what would be as it were your strategize what what what would you say to get the schools well I wanted ads probably say sex violence my favorite let me put it this way we were talking earlier about Shackleton Bailey's edition of Cicero's letters which is which is so brilliant but the he wrote a biography of Cicero which has the most brilliant ending where he says it's we should understand the Cicero in the letters this life-enhancing figure who enraptured his own generation and can do so for hours for anyone who's willing to spare the time to read his letters and to discover the Romans Virgil's togood people desperate masters of a larger world and those are those the desperate masters of a larger world I think is the most perfect summation of the Romans right one Walkers I keep trying to end on a high note back this isn't find it for us perhaps another Roman doll and well I do have an idea oddly enough but I'm going to keep it to firmly to myself and yes now I would love to go back to that world at some point it's been been the greatest pleasure of my writing life I think right now we are ten minutes or so for audience questions to people at the front here good evening gentlemen professor professor there's a sense of elegiac lament for Roman democracy your description of the the actual methods they used to count the boats I could I could sense the real sense of lament there for the passing of the the old Republican democratic system in favor of this imperial system that came were you as did you feel as strongly as we some of us radiate this energetic quality this will amenity for democracy yes I did I it was an incredible thing there Roman Republic I mean there were there were obviously huge flaws in it women couldn't vote at stage obviously couldn't vote most people in fact there were in theory I think about a million electus when Cicero was running for council but only those that could actually get there and vote in the course of the day could vote and it was weighted in favor of the wealthy their votes counted for more nevertheless it must have been a most extraordinary sight and the checks and balances the divisions of power the access of ordinary people to their rulers to to to be countless to to watch the laws being made and so on and is in some ways a more vibrant democracy than our a mechanism of enormous sophistication and I did share Cicero's the men for for the passing of this wondrous thing which has grown up over centuries and there were moments when I was writing the book when it seemed that the West Was is a very settled State I mean I started the book what in 2003 and finished it in 2013 14 whenever it was I can't remember but 16 it was a period of stability in the West and sometimes I did wonder why I was writing the books but now when I look back on it it was as if I mean there was something in the air that one had sensed and really what are the books about they're about unscrupulous billionaires by that standard at the time whipping up the people against the elite and doing it for their own ends of power and the system cracking and breaking and and in the end the money that flooded into the system and the sense that there was no longer a feeling of what the Republic was really for anymore and I didn't think the Roman Republic and it's four stanzas of warning to talk to every democracy how fragile the actual structure can be because it would have seemed inconceivable to Cicero at the beginning of his career by the end of it the whole thing would have been lying rubble can I just pick up the question you were asked about the decline of political discourse and maybe I'll answer the question you also asked about sex violence and I'd say persuasion maybe because I think for me that's one of the things that perhaps classic sprawl needs to sort of help to evangelize which is in this era of sort of it was it today I think colleagues have announced fake news it's the word of the year so for me understanding Cicero is actually about encouraging democracy encouraging people to understand the powers of persuasion in this era of sort of mass media advertising so do you think that's also one of the areas perhaps that could be brought up I do I agree I think what has frightened you about social media is the way that everyone retreats into their own zone and only follows and listens to the news and gets the information that confirms their existing prejudices and of course to walk to a degree everybody has always been born one way or the other in terms of that political views and may evolve over time but there very often don't change them most people in the course of a campaign or a speech but but the essence of democracy must be the persuasion as possible otherwise it's meaningless exercise and the essence of Cicero's life ceaselessly was to persuade that that was what he did morning noon and night and of course he wouldn't persuade everyone but maybe you could persuade the 10 20 percent in the middle by force of reason and argument and I do share you're worried that that is what we have lost and now that it doesn't matter what people say or do they are so cynical they and they are so they've swallowed so much you say fake news or conspiracy theories or whatever and their prejudice are prejudice immovable yes indeed the ancients thought in terms of getting their own way by three different means which they generalized as force deceit and persuasion by which they made reason and logic we all know which is the most successful and the last the other two tend to be wielded to readily these days I think we have time for one more thank you very much indeed but just following on for actually for the last question I just wonder if you're a bit unfair about to Parliament in the middle of last night sleep so as is my want I turned on to the parliamentary channel which usually does the trick and I was in the middle of a high of Lord's debate and the middle of a speech by Lord judge of whom I was I must confess ignorant who is a very distinguished lawyer and they were debating no I doubt your sexiest subject but it was the money laundering bill and I was absolutely spellbound he was a distinguished advocate without a note going to this bill Forensic League highly amusingly both to his colleagues and indeed in the chamber and actually for a moment actually gave me a hope that actually when people like Lord judge get to grips of the green for pupil as that bill dismiss named was we don't know how great it is and except large and long then actually there is some hope for this country then people like him in the second chamber actually get to grips with that I think sister food of his speech yes all those Cicero would have wanted to be on bbc1 a prime time at least three hours in a sense although I agree what you say a context in which you frame the anecdote proves the other case unfortunately and I mean the media politics has followed the the media and now it's become trench warfare and really the media fall upon any when the best as you know the definition is that of a gaff is when a politician blurts out the truth and it's invariably the case and politics is just now all about defensive not saying too much or repeating the same thing again and again and again we saw that in the last election in a way that was just unbelievable in a democracy actually so I'm afraid I I'm glad that it's there on the parliamentary Channel at midnight but it's and in the second chamber and not elected but it's not really you know the heart of the beast is it that is I think quite frightening well and they're down Beacon oh but I've forgotten all my upbeat endings I think you've fled to you but Pete anything's there I think we must wrap up now Robert thank you so much for supporting peasants were all this into everything you put into what we all hope will turn out to have been his first [Applause] it's a wrap

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Keywords: robert harris, classics for all, fundraiser, lecture, cicero, latin, rome, author, books, peter jones

Id: 3mgXDJMRuRw

Length: 51min 2sec (3062 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2017