Master storyteller but not a master of suspense
MUNICH by Robert Harris Hutchinson, £20
IT is almost 30 years since Robert Harris made a TV documentary about the Munich peace talks of 1938 that preceded the outbreak of the Second World War. Then, Harris was the political editor of The Observer newspaper.
In the intervening years he has produced 11 bestselling thrillers that have sold more than 25 million copies but his fascination with the topic obviously never left him.
His latest novel tells the story of the talks through the eyes of two men who were friends at Oxford in the early 1930s but find themselves in opposite camps.
Hugh Legat is a private secretary to the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain while Paul Hartmann is a diplomat in the German foreign office and a member of the anti-Hitler resistance.
As the British and the French desperately attempt to persuade the Führer not to invade the Sudetenland and thus plunge Europe into war, there is a plot revolving around Legat and Hartmann’s personal lives but these insights are all too often sacrificed to the demands of their day jobs.
Harris brilliantly evokes a sense of place. He clearly has an intimate knowledge of the geography of Number 10 Downing Street and there are vivid descriptions of the increasingly agitated discussions in the run-up to the main event. At one Cabinet meeting: “Most were smoking. One of the big sash windows overlooking the garden had been opened in an attempt to disperse the fug of cigars and pipes and cigarettes.”
Since Hitler viewed smoking as “decadent”, there is no question of a similar atmosphere pervading when the story moves to Munich, where all parties gather for negotiations in the marble halls of the Führerbau.
Harris has been described as “a literary Alfred Hitchcock” and the quality of writing is uniformly high. When the secretaries have gone home, their typewriters are “shrouded for the night like the cages of sleeping birds” and one member of Chamberlain’s entourage is described as having “a curious, tight-lipped way of speaking, as if he were practising to be a ventriloquist”.
While Harris is an undoubted wordsmith, on the evidence of this book he is less identifiable as a master of suspense. In reviewing works such as Fatherland and Archangel, the critic had to be careful to avoid spoilers, so satisfying were the history-defying plot twists.
As none of Legat and Hartmann’s machinations affect the course of history, this book is as much a dramatised documentary as a novel.
A document revealing Hitler’s true agenda is passed to Hartmann by his lover Frau Winter with the words: “You want the English to fight? Show them that.” But it is not enough for Chamberlain, who Harris paints as a man with a noble desire to give peace ever more chances even if he ends up looking like a chump. Meanwhile a subplot involving Legat and his wife fizzles outs.
The events at Munich make for a fascinating tale but one written as much by Harris the historian as Harris the storyteller.