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Robert Harris reacts to Pope Leo XIV watching Conclave | LBC
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May 12, 2025
Robert Harris’ novel Conclave was a dramatisation of the process to elect a new Pope - he joins Nick Ferrari to discuss the parallels between papal and Westminster politics, his new book Precipice, and reacts to the news that newly elected Pope Leo XIV has watched Conclave. Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive #nickferrari #robertharris #conclave #pope #vatican #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
It was one of the few times ever in my life I was ahead of the game
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My fiancé, yes, I know, ridiculous at my age, said, we've got to see this. Are you sure
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I went on, it was fantastic! And I was able to tell all my friends this is fantastic
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So what a privilege to speak to the novelist who wrote the book for the film
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Robert Harris, who joins me now, former political journalist turned best-selling author
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and the creator of Conclave. Can I call you Robert? Robert, good morning
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You can, Nick, yes. Thank you, sir. You didn't call me your eminence
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Yes, indeed, Jerome. Come on, what gave you the inspiration for Conclave
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Well, I was watching the election of Pope Francis and just before he appeared on the balcony
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all the windows on either side filled up with the faces of the cardinal electors
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And as you said, I used to be a political journalist and I thought, they've just elected God's representative on earth
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This is what I call an election. um so i thought there must be a novel here and so i set out to research it and i discovered it
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really is a fascinating story and at that moment i knew i could make a novel out of it i know and
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i wouldn't dream of asking you to name your sources but were you able to get quite close
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to the action speak to someone who's in the room where it happens to quote hamilton uh yes i don't
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think he'd mind me saying uh the late cardinal called mcmurphy o'connor the british cardinal
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I met him and he was one of the people who had been behind Pope Francis when he he he was actually nominated and got a lot of votes against the man who became Pope Benedict
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So, yeah, he was able to reassure me that I was on the right lines
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Where is politics more read in tooth and claw? The political world that you covered, both the BBC and, as I recall
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you were political editor for The Observer, I think, as I recall from memory
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having read that profile of you on Fatherland. So, politics in the raw there or politics at the Vatican
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Well, it's not as overt as it is in Westminster or in Washington, obviously
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No one can say, I want to be Pope, vote for me. It doesn't work like that
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It's a far more subtle process. It would be the kiss of death to appear to be ambitious
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But of course, there are politics. These are exhaustive ballots that go on until they reach a two thirds majority
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So candidates move ahead Candidates fall back It a responsive movement And one of the candidates eventually gets what we would call in the secular world momentum
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but they call the operation of the Holy Spirit. I think there's not a dissimilarity there
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It's a general feeling that, hey, this is the guy. If you'll allow, and please challenge me if you're wrong
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a lot of the drivers in Westminster in politics are a lust for power
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personal vanity. What drives cardinals on to try and be Pope? Well, I don't know that any of them take a view as straightforward as an ambitious MP
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I think that they are holy men. They are trying to do their best for the church and to relay God's
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message. And if they feel that they're up to being Pope, and if enough of their colleagues
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want them, then I think that they step forward. I don't think anyone ever becomes Pope, or
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certainly not in recent history, who really thinks they're incapable of doing the job
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because they'd be able to stop the ballots once they saw their votes creeping up. That was what
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Francis did against Benedict. He realised that he wasn't ready for it and he risked splitting the
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church. So he pleaded with his supporters to back Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict
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Yes, he did. I wonder if I can get a response from you on this that's just broken from NBC
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Chicago, reminding my listeners, you'll know, of course, that the new Pope Leo XIV was once known
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as Chicago Bob. So this is on the local NBC station. It's been reported that the Pope spoke
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with his brother before the Conclave. He used to play Wordle and other games
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It's something to keep his mind off of the real world, says his brother
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His brother was asked, has he watched Conclave? Yes, he did, so he knew how to behave
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It's that kind of stuff, because I want to take his mind off it, laugh about something
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because this is now an awesome responsibility, said the Pope's brother. Has the author a reaction, please
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Well, this is getting more and more ridiculous. There was a report earlier in the week that several cardinals had watched the movie
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because they'd never been in a conclave, they didn't know how it was going to operate, and the film, following the novel, tries faithfully to recreate the process
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It doubly amusing that the man who got the job watched the film and maybe took a few clues from Ralph Fiennes performance It becoming surreal Nick to be honest Well it also surreal in a way Robert You and I are talking of course
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we've just finished VE Day and I need to remind listeners, you were the author, the first of your
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books I've read was Fatherland. Just briefly in a sentence for those not familiar with your work
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What was Fatherland about, Robert? Fatherland was set in 1964 in Berlin
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and it was on the eve of Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday celebrations
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And it's an account of what the world might have been like
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if Hitler had won the war. It takes place over about five days
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and it's about the gradually unravelling of the great dark secret at the heart of Nazi Germany
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And, yeah, that was my first book. That came out 33 years ago
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Good God. I'm amazed I'm still standing. Well, we've got to talk about your new... Well, you're not standing. You're doing very well
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We're going to talk about your new book in a moment. Goodness me, so you were on the political team at the BBC
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You were political editor of The Observer. Where did you get these ideas from
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Were you always a frustrated writer, do you think? Yeah, I think, looking back on it, I was not a very good news reporter
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A story could break under my nose and I wouldn't really notice it
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We all do a go and do that, Robert. I mean, let's not say too much about that, mate
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But I was better at the longer form kind of writing. I'd written books, one of which, called Selling Hitler
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became a TV series about the Forge Hitler Diaries. and I was always really a novelist working as a journalist rather than a journalist who suddenly
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decided to write a novel so so in the end I you know I ended up in probably the only job I could
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really do adequately. And do you set yourself a strict limit you know I am going to write 3,000
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words today or I'm going to write 6,000 words this weekend or do you write as and how the mood takes
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you? I'm at my best as an old journalist writing against the clock against the deadline otherwise
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one just never gets down to it. So I try to write a book in six months. Six months, you really need
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to write 20,000 words a month. So it's sort of 5,000 words a week. And if you approach a book
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in that way, it becomes more manageable. Otherwise, it'd be impossible. But I need terror. It's only
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when I got the adrenaline going that I can actually make things up properly So you got a news editor or an editor screaming at you where that copy sort of thing Right come on the latest book is Precipice Give us an idea what that about Robert That is based on a true story It set in 1914 and 1915 And it really from the point
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of view of the Prime Minister at that time, Asquith, as he struggles as the country slides
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into the First World War. And at the same time, he's having an affair
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a very passionate emotional relationship with a young socialite called Venetia Stanley
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He wrote to her constantly. He wrote 560 letters to her. He would write thousands of words a day
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Sometimes he would write during cabinet meetings and he poured out all the secrets of the government to her
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He sent her secret documents through the post. It was an immense security breach
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and she wrote back to him. She kept all his letters, which are now in an archive in Oxford
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but he destroyed all hers, and there must have been 300 or 400
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so I thought what I'd do as a novelist is I'll invent her replies. And in that way, she starts to emerge from the mist
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and becomes a real character, and the novel is a thriller about an MI5 officer
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who's charged with looking into why secret telegrams have started appearing scattered in the countryside around southern England
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which again is true because he used to show her these secret telegrams
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and then throw them out of the window of the car as they drove along. So it was just a gift, really, to dramatise
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And the precipice really is the title is a pun, both on the fact that Britain went over the edge of the precipice
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into the First World War, and their affair was a scandal on the precipice of being exposed
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Precipice is the title. Last question before I let you go. Chicago Bob, or Boat Leo as we now know him
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did they get the right move? He was a bit of an outsider. I read he was 10th in the betting with the bookies at one point
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Do you reckon they've got the right bloke, Robert? He looks pretty good to me
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I think he's quite shrewd. I'm not a Catholic. I'm not really a believer
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but I did come to have a lot of respect for this process. if only our own political parties elected their leaders in this way we might have had better
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prime ministers and leaders of the opposition over the last few years so yeah I think they
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probably have got the right guy everything I've heard about him so far not least his taste in
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movies suggests that he is absolutely the right guy
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