Hello I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the best-selling writer Robert Harris. He was apparently a political

junkie from a young age, just six when he penned the essay,

Why Me and my Dad don't like Sir Alec Douglas Hume.

His first novel had a somewhat catchier title, Fatherland.

In it he imagined a world after the Nazis had won the Second World War.

It sold more than 3 million copies and made him a household name.

His later books include Enigma about the wartime code breakers at Bletchley Park and the political thriller The Ghost, both also successful films.

He has spent years as a journalist too, writing in his phrase history on the wing.

Politics is the essence of life, he said. in his

history on the wing.

Politics is the essence of life, he says.

It's the most incredible theatre of characters, drama,

incident, unexpected events, human frailties,

astonishing courage. The whole business, the cavalcade, fascinates me all the time.

So you're fascinated by politics, you have the education, you have the background, it's in your blood, but you've never been tempted to

stand for Parliament yourself why not I think that I'm at heart a writer and I don't

think I'm a very good team player. I have no desire for power actually. I hate

bossing people around and wouldn't want to do it and I do admire people that have the

tenacity to do it actually.

...