Shades of hypocrisy
Sir: Describing the altered film version of his exciting book Fatherland, Robert Har- ris, the novelist and now Spectator diarist, excoriates other writers who take money for film treatments of their books and then complain about the changes directors make. 'I loathe that kind of hypocrisy,' he writes (Diary, 9 April).
This high-minded Robert Harris surely cannot be any relation to that Robert Har- ris who was a well paid columnist on Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times and yet later wrote (in a mixed review of my book Murdoch) that Murdoch's 'ruthlessness' was `almost . . a kind of sadism . . . all perva- sive. It is the heart of the man' and that 'the consumption of shit is what working for Murdoch usually entails'.
Is there, I wonder, any difference between the hypocrisy of a novelist who takes money from and then denounces those who film his book and that of a columnist who without complaint pockets his publisher's shilling for years and then, having left, turns around and publicly abus- es that same publisher?
And, anyway, why did Harris the colum- nist feel so compelled to 'consume shit', as Harris the reviewer so elegantly put it? It's all rather confusing. Is there a Harris, or anyone else, who can explain?
William Shawcross
Eastdean, East Sussex
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