NBM: For a while Penguin did a splendid job with you. Back in the sixties, Penguin had you in every railroad station newsstand in England. But you’re not published by Penguin now.
Haggard: It was my publishers who sold the secondary rights. They told my agents that they’d sell them to so and so. Later they sold them to some others, but at the moment I haven’t got a paperback publisher in England. I’ve got three unpublished novels in America, which I’m not too worried about. What I am worried about is the past. I don’t feel that I’ve been given an entirely fair crack of the whip. Walker took me gladly enough in America, and I don’t think they lost money on me, after the Detective Book Club and after paperbacks and so on.
NBM: I’ll put it this way: much less interesting writers are doing much better in America. Americans are being deprived of splendid reading. The kind of novel that you write isn’t written by anyone else I know.
Haggard: Certainly not Len Deighton and certainly not le Carré.
NBM: It’s Haggard. I think Americans will respond to Colonel Russell because Americans are hero, worshipers, and Colonel Russell obviously represents, for you, the best in English character.
Haggard: Yes, yes. Even I regard him as a slight hero.
NBM: But let’s take a closer look at just what Russell represents. We’ve already said standards: courage, honor, duty, responsibility. Those things that were once thought of as the cornerstones of English character. Beyond expressing your respect for these things, are you also issuing warnings? Are you telling your readers, “Look—”
Haggard: Unless we get back to these, we shall need the Russians in to put us straight. But we are collapsing now. I’m convinced of this. It doesn’t matter which government you’ve got, but under our present constitutional system, or under any government we’re likely to have, we’re going to sink to the level of Malta.
NBM: When did it start? Did it start post World War II or did it start with the intellectuals of the thirties?
Haggard: I reckon what broke us was the First World War, because that took the finest of our young lives and it cost us a terrible lot of money. Germany has beaten us twice, really. It has indeed. Look at Germany now, it’s stinking rich. Now you ask me, “Are you sounding a warning?” Perhaps I am, but not deliberately. I’m not a Billy Graham about it.
NBM: But it’s there.
Haggard: But it’s there. Oh yes, I have to admit that. For instance, that reviewer that I’ve been talking about: when he wants to be nasty about Russell he calls him a Boy Scout, which is slang for being a bit of a goodie, a bit overkeen. Well, different, having old-fashioned values, like discipline and keeping your nose clean.
NBM: This list of your titles takes us up to ’84, and it’s over twenty-five novels. How long does it take you to write a novel?
Haggard: I take much more time getting the framework up, the steelwork up, than I do writing the book. I’m not one of those writers who says, “I’m going to start a book today,” and goes out and buys a quire of paper and starts writing. I can’t do it that way. You must have a firm plot, and you must have enough incident in it — not necessarily recurring at regular intervals. All of this sounds terribly corny, but it is in fact how thrillers are constructed.
NBM: Do you have a full outline when you start?
Haggard: I have a chapter outline as to what happens for, say, fifteen chapters, the main occurrences, playing the dialogue against the description, and so on. All the old tricks. All the old corny tricks. But that takes me much longer than actually writing the book, which I can do in — well, given a fair run, I can do it in twelve weeks, comfortably. The actual writing and then typing out.
NBM: Longhand first?
Haggard: Oh, yes.
NBM: And then typescript?
Haggard: Yes.
NBM: Do you do your own typescript, or send it out to a secretary?
Haggard: No, I do my own. But only because only I can read my handwriting.
NBM: Morning writer?
Haggard: I write in the morning. I get up early, write for two or three hours, then go shopping, and then my friend and I have lunch. And then — a habit I acquired in the East — I have a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon. And then start the day again.
NBM: Russell’s age is a bit of a problem, isn’t it? You got him to about sixty, and in the recent novels he seems rather younger.
Haggard: In the last two novels; he only appears as a reference character. Now I had to talk this out with my publishers and my agents. He’d been replaced by a very anglicized West Indian, which I’m told went quite successfully. This chap went to Harrow and has become very English. And he has a delightful wife.
I had to talk to my publishers about replacing Russell, because they said you can’t really get away with Russell forever. They all said that I rather tended to project myself into Russell. To a certain extent he was what I would rather like to be, if I’d been a regular soldier, if I’d been Anglo-Irish, and if I’d been in the Irish Guards. But he’s got a lot of other characteristics. And they said, “Well, you simply can’t get away with this. He’s too old. He can’t be jumping out of windows and doing the things he does. You’ve just got to have a younger protagonist.” So I thought up this West Indian.
NBM: Let’s return to the wet Left, please.
Haggard: I can’t tell you much about the Left except I don’t like them.
NBM: I mean in terms of what they have done to English society. When did it begin, in the thirties?
Haggard: I reckon early thirties or very late twenties. I came out of the University in 1929. It wasn’t noticeable then. I went to India in 1932 when it was just noticeable. I came back in 1936 and got married. And then it was very noticeable. The sheer decay of standards. I realize I’m simply an old fogy. And the books show it. But I’m not going to change at my age. I’m pretty much dyed-in-the-wool by now.
NBM: Is it accurate to say that these Left intellectuals are motivated by a curious self-hatred?
Haggard: Entirely. Self-hatred, and another factor, particularly with the rich ones, guilt. What do they do about it? Nothing. Do they give their money away? No sir. They do not give their money away. They keep it. They run big houses. They’re all as bogus as a three-dollar bill. I’ve met them when I was working in London. But one thing I’ve always kept away from is literary society. I never went to publishers’ parties or mixed with the Left writers. Never. Even when I was actually living in London myself, in Doctorland near Harley Street. But I got a very strong distaste for them, a sort of instinctive mistrust. It’s just like I didn’t like rats.
NBM: One of the things that reviewers seem to complain about is your insistence that there are racial characteristics, there are racial differences.
Haggard: That is taboo thinking.
NBM: It seems very clear in your novels, for example, that most Indians are not to be trusted. And you prefer Turks to Greeks.
Haggard: I much prefer Turks to Greeks. I don't like Greeks. So far as the Indian martial races are concerned, I have great admiration for them: Sikhs, Marathas, Gurkhas. They’re mostly yeoman peasant stock: the eldest son runs the land, and the youngest son goes into the army. Just like that. They’ve done it for generations. I have the greatest respect for them. But apart from them, the rest of India is a four-letter word.
NBM: You regard the Swiss and the French as both feckless and bribable.