Munich was published by Hutchinson in 2017. In September 1938, as Europe teeters on the brink of war over Hitler’s demand for the Sudetenland, two former Oxford friends — Hugh Legat, a British diplomatic private secretary, and Paul von Hartmann, a German Foreign Office official secretly working against Hitler — are brought together at the Munich conference. Hartmann carries a document proving that Hitler’s ambitions extend far beyond the Sudetenland, and the two men must find a way to get the document to Chamberlain before the agreement is signed.
The novel’s deepest interest was in the moral complexity of appeasement. Harris presented Chamberlain not as a naive fool but as a man making a rational calculation: buy time for British rearmament while hoping that diplomacy might still work. The novel neither condemned nor endorsed appeasement but showed the impossible choices facing men who could see the catastrophe approaching but lacked the means to prevent it.
The Appeasement Debate
Harris’s sympathetic treatment of Chamberlain reflected a growing historical reassessment. Historians increasingly argue that the Munich Agreement, whatever its moral failings, gave Britain an additional year to rearm — a year without which the Battle of Britain could not have been won. Harris presented this argument without whitewashing the betrayal of Czechoslovakia.
Collecting Munich
First edition (Hutchinson, London, 2017): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- US first edition (Knopf): $10–$20
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. The novel’s treatment of appeasement gains relevance whenever democracies face authoritarian aggression.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Munich made into a film? Yes. A 2021 Netflix film, Munich – The Edge of War, starred Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain and George MacKay as Hugh Legat. The film was well-received for its recreation of the September 1938 crisis, though it compressed some of Harris’s character development.