Malia asked Robert Harris:

I'm a huge fan of your historical fiction - the Cicero series and An Officer and a Spy in particular - (and have converted both my parents as well;-) I'm wondering, how you decide on the subjects and historical focus of your novels? Do your decisions stem from a prior fascination with a figure or are they the development of a historical tidbit you heard of and wanted to explore further?

Robert Harris The pleasure of the writing life is you never know what might turn up next. I started in 1999-2000 wanting to write a novel about America, and decided to make it an allegory and set it in Pompeii. I enjoyed Pompeii so much that I decided to write a big piece of historical fiction set in the Roman republic – a kind of ‘West Wing on the Tiber’. Roman Polanski wanted to make a film about the Dreyfus affair and asked me to write a screenplay, and I discovered the story of Colonel Picquart and persuaded him to let me write a novel first (hopefully one day he’ll make the movie). It’s purely a matter of serendipity.

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