He wrote and directed Cubs in 2006 about urban fox hunting which was nominated for a BAFTA in the Best Short Film category and won a BIFA.

[4] Harper then moved on to direct a range of film and television work which includes Misfits, The Scouting Book for Boys (2009), This Is England '86, The Borrowers (2011), Peaky Blinders (2013) and The Woman in Black: Angel of Death.

[13] Pierce Brosnan played the lead, replacing Sam Neill (with whom Harper previously worked on Peaky Blinders) who was forced to pull out for "personal reasons.

[13] In 2017, Harper teamed up with Jack Thorne again, to make "The Commuter," starring Timothy Spall, the third episode of the Channel 4/Amazon Video anthology series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.

[15] Wild Rose starring Jessie Buckley (with whom Harper had worked previously on War and Peace) and Julie Walters, and written by Nicole Taylor, was filmed in Glasgow, Scotland, and Nashville, USA, in the summer of 2017.

"[16] The Aeronauts, based on James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell's famous 1862 flight, and starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones started its shoot in the summer of 2018.