Horowitz is also a screenwriter, creating
television series such as Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. Orion made the
disputable claim in its announcement about the forthcoming Moriarty that he
"may have committed more (fictional) murders than any other living
author".
Anthony Horowitz was born in Copley, into a
wealthy Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper-class lifestyle. As
an overweight and unhappy child, Horowitz enjoyed reading books from his
father's library. At the age of eight, Horowitz was sent to the boarding school
Orley Farm in Harrow, Middlesex. There, he
entertained his peers by telling them the stories he had read. Horowitz
described his time in the school as "a brutal experience", recalling
that he was often beaten by the headmaster. At age 13 he went on to Rugby
School and discovered a love for writing.
Horowitz adored his mother, who introduced
him to Frankenstein and Dracula. She also gave him a human skull for his 13th
birthday. Horowitz said in an interview that it reminds him to get to the end of
each story since he will soon look like the skull. From the age of eight,
Horowitz knew he wanted to be a writer, realising "the only time when I'm
totally happy is when I'm writing". He graduated from the University of
York with a BA in English literature in 1977.
In at least one interview, Horowitz claims
to believe that H. P. Lovecraft based his fictional Necronomicon on a real
text, and to have read some of that text.
Horowitz's father was associated with some
of the politicians in the "circle" of prime minister Harold Wilson,
including Eric Miller.Facing bankruptcy, he moved his assets into Swiss
numbered bank accounts. He died from cancer when his son Anthony was 22, and
the family was never able to track down the missing money despite years of
trying.
Horowitz now lives in Central London with
his wife Jill Green, whom he married in Hong Kong
on 15 April 1988. Green produces Foyle's War, the series Horowitz writes for
ITV. They have two sons, Nicholas Mark Horowitz (born 1989) and Cassian James
Horowitz (born 1991). He credits his family with much of his success in
writing, as he says they help him with ideas and research. He is a patron of
child protection charity Kidscape.
Anthony Horowitz's first book, The Sinister
Secret of Frederick K Bower, was a humorous adventure for children, published
in 1979[10] and later reissued as Enter Frederick K Bower. In 1981 his second
novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet was published and he moved
to Paris to
write his third book. In 1983 the first of the Pentagram series, The Devil's
Door-Bell, was released. This story saw Martin Hopkins battling an ancient evil
that threatened the whole world. Only three of four remaining stories in the series
were ever written: The Night of the Scorpion (1984), The Silver Citadel (1986)
and Day of the Dragon (1986). In 1985 he released Myths and Legends, a
collection of retold tales from around the world.
In between writing these novels, Horowitz
turned his attention to legendary characters, working with Richard Carpenter on
the Robin of Sherwood television series, writing five episodes of the third
season. He also novelised three of Carpenter's episodes as a children's book
under the title Robin Sherwood: The Hooded Man (1986). In addition, he created
Crossbow (1987), a half-hour action adventure series loosely based on William
Tell.
In 1988, Groosham Grange was published.
This book went on to win the 1989 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award.
It was partially based on the years Horowitz spent at boarding school. Its
central character is a thirteen-year-old "witch", David Eliot, gifted
as the seventh son of a seventh son. Like Horowitz's, Eliot's childhood is
unhappy. The Groosham Grange books are aimed at a slightly younger audience
than Horowitz's previous books.
This era in Horowitz's career also saw
Adventurer (1987) and Starting Out (1990) published. However, the most major
release of Horowitz's early career was The Falcon's Malteser (1986). This book
was the first in the successful Diamond Brothers series, and was filmed for
television in 1989 as Just Ask for Diamond, with an all star cast that included
Bill Paterson, Jimmy Nail, Roy Kinnear, Susannah York, Michael Robbins and
Patricia Hodge, and featured Colin Dale and Dursley McLinden as Nick and Tim
Diamond. It was followed in 1987 with Public Enemy Number Two, and by South by
South East in 1991 followed by The French Confection, I Know What You Did Last
Wednesday, The Blurred Man and most recently The Greek Who Stole Christmas.
Horowitz wrote many stand alone novels in
the 1990s. 1994's Granny, a comedy thriller about an evil grandmother, was
Horowitz's first book in three years, and it was the first of three books for
an audience similar to that of Groosham Grange. The second of these was The
Switch, a body swap story, first published in 1996. The third was 1997's The
Devil and His Boy, which is set in the Elizabethan era and explores the rumour
of Elizabeth I's secret son. In 1999, The Unholy Grail was published as a
sequel to Groosham Grange. The Unholy Grail was renamed as Return to Groosham
Grange in 2003, possibly to help readers understand the connection between the
books. Horowitz Horror (1999) and More Horowitz Horror (2000) saw Horowitz
exploring a darker side of his writing. Each book contains several short horror
stories. Many of these stories were repackaged in twos or threes as the Pocket
Horowitz series.
Horowitz began his most famous and
successful series in the new millennium with the Alex Rider novels. These books
are about a 14-year-old boy becoming a spy, a member of the British Secret
Service branch MI6. Currently, there are nine Alex Rider books and the tenth is
connected to the Alex Rider series (although it is not a part of it) :
Stormbreaker (2000), Point Blanc (2001), Skeleton Key (2002), Eagle Strike
(2003), Scorpia (2004) Ark Angel (2005), Snakehead (2007), Crocodile Tears
(2009), Scorpia Rising (2011), and Russian Roulette(2013). The seventh Alex
Rider novel, Snakehead, was released on 31 October 2007,[13] and the eighth,
Crocodile Tears, was released in the UK on 12 November 2009. The ninth
Alex Rider book, Scorpia Rising, was released on 31 March 2011. Horowitz stated
that Scorpia Rising was the last book in the Alex Rider series. He has,
however, written another novel about the life of Yassen Gregorovich entitled
Russian Roulette, which was released on 12 September 2013 in the United Kingdom and 3 October 2013 in the United States of America.
It will not be a part of the Alex Rider series.
In 2003, Horowitz also wrote three novels
featuring the Diamond Brothers: The Blurred Man, The French Confection and I
Know What You Did Last Wednesday, which were republished together as Three of
Diamonds in 2004. The author information page in early editions of Scorpia and
the introduction to Three of Diamonds claimed that Horowitz had travelled to Australia to
research a new Diamond Brothers book, entitled Radius of the Lost Shark.
However, this book has not been mentioned since, so it is doubtful it is still
planned. A new Diamond Brothers "short" book entitled The Greek who
Stole Christmas! was later released. It is hinted at the end of The Greek who
Stole Christmas that Radius of the Lost Shark may turn out to be the eighth
book in the series.
In 2004, Horowitz branched out to an adult
audience with The Killing Joke, a comedy about a man who tries to track a joke
to its source with disastrous consequences. Horowitz's second adult novel, The
Magpie Murders, was due out on 18 October 2006. However, that date passed with
no further news on the book; all that is known about it is that it will be
about "a whodunit writer who is murdered while he's writing his latest
whodunit" and "it has an ending which I hope will come as a very
nasty surprise". As the initial release date was not met, it is not
currently known if or when The Magpie Murders will be released.
In August 2005, Horowitz released a book
called Raven's Gate which began another series entitled The Power of Five (The
Gatekeepers in the United States).
He describes it as "Alex Rider with witches and devils". The second
book in the series, Evil Star, was released in April 2006. The third in the
series is called Nightrise, and was released on 2 April 2007. The fourth book
Necropolis was released in October 2008. The fifth and last book was released
in October 2012 and is named 'Oblivion.'
The Power of Five is a rewritten, modern
version of the Pentagram series from the 1980s.[citation needed] Although
Pentagram required five books for story development, Horowitz completed only
four: The Devil's Door-bell (Raven's Gate), The Night of the Scorpion (Evil
Star), The Silver Citadel (Nightrise) and Day of the Dragon (Necropolis).
Horowitz was clearly aiming for the same audience that read the Alex Rider
novels with these rewrites, and The Power of Five has gained more public
recognition than his earlier works, earning number 1 in the top 10 book chart.
In October 2008, Anthony Horowitz's play
Mindgame opened Off Broadway at the Soho Playhouse in New York City. Mindgame starred Keith
Carradine, Lee Godart, and Kathleen McNenny. The production was the New York stage
directorial debut for Ken Russell. Recently he got into a joke dispute with
Darren Shan over the author using a character that had a similar name and a
description that fitted his. Although Horowitz considered suing, he decided not
to.
In March 2009 he was a guest on Private
Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.
On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur
Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock
Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from
them and to be entitled The House of Silk. It was both published in November
2011 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Horowitz was appointed Officer of the Order
of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to
literature.
Horowitz began writing for television in
the 1980s, contributing to the children's anthology series Dramarama, and also
writing for the popular fantasy series Robin of Sherwood. His association with
murder mysteries began with the adaptation of several Hercule Poirot stories
for ITV's popular Agatha Christie's Poirot series during the 1990s.
Often his work has a comic edge, such as
with the comic murder anthology Murder Most Horrid (BBC Two, 1991) and the
comedy-drama The Last Englishman (1995), starring Jim Broadbent. From 1997, he
wrote the majority of the episodes in the early series of Midsomer Murders. In
2001, he created a drama anthology series of his own for the BBC, Murder in
Mind, an occasional series which deals with a different set of characters and a
different murder every one-hour episode.
He is also less-favourably known for the
creation of two short-lived and sometimes derided science-fiction shows, Crime
Traveller (1997) for BBC One and The Vanishing Man (pilot 1996, series 1998)
for ITV. While Crime Traveller received favourable viewing figures it was not
renewed for a second season, which Horowitz accounts to temporary personnel
transitioning within the BBC. It has, however, attracted somewhat of a cult
following.[citation needed] The successful 2002 launch of the detective series
Foyle's War, set during the Second World War, helped to restore his reputation
as one of Britain's foremost writers of popular drama.
He devised the 2009 ITV crime drama
Collision and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael A. Walker.
Horowitz is the writer of a feature film
screenplay, The Gathering, which was released in 2003 and starred Christina
Ricci. He wrote the screenplay for Alex Rider's first major motion picture,
Stormbreaker.
In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live on 6
April 2011, Horowitz announced that he was writing the sequel to Steven
Spielberg's Secret of the Unicorn. The sequel is rumoured to be based on The
Adventures of Tintin comic Prisoners of the Sun and directed by Peter Jackson,
who produced the first film.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock
Holmes: the many identities of the world's favourite detective – in pictures
According
to our readers, Sherlock Holmes is the perfect way to get back into the reading
habit. But how does his appearance on the page compare to his screen
incarnations? And if you've never investigated the world's most famous
detective, then where should you begin?
Guardian readers and Marta Bausells
"I started with The Valley of Fear a
while back and then went back to the start, with A Study in Scarlet, and have
now finished The Sign of Four. Great entertainment and so of their time. It
always seems to me, with his attention to clothing, contemporary events,
references to real places, attention to nuances of dialect, etc, that Conan
Doyle must have felt very sharp and contemporary to read at the time. The Sign
of Four is especially notable as the one where Sherlock is happily shooting up
cocaine because he gets bored easily..." said SnowyJohn in last week's Tips,
Links and Suggestions. Photograph: Penguin
The Hound of the Baskervilles
"So which one would be the best one to
read first? The Hound of the Baskervilles is the most famous but is it
best?" asked fat_hamster. This front cover of the 1901 novel was illustrated
by EA Abbey. Photograph: Mary Evans Picture Library
A Study in Scarlet
Several readers agreed that a chronological
approach is the simplest and best way to start reading Sherlock Holmes'
stories. "I'd just start at the start. A Study in Scarlet is the first one
and is a good read", continued SnowyJohn. Here, a poster for the stage
production of the book from the Southwark Playhouse. Photograph: Southwark
Playhouse
A Study in Scarlet, Peter Cushing
The recent TV series has put Sherlock
Holmes back in the spotlight. But which screen adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's detective is the best? Peter Cushing was one of the first actors to
embody Holmes for the small screen. Here, he appears in the episode A Study in
Scarlet for the 1960s BBC series. Photograph: BBC
The Hound of the Baskervilles. Cumberbatch
and Freeman
Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch
offer a modern Sherlock that has little to do with Conan Doyle's originals,
according to Sara Richards: "Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch is not
Sherlock Holmes. He is a 21st-century adaptation and comes suitably equipped
with digital aids plus a phenomenal memory … The two are therefore totally
different and should be viewed as such." Even though most plots in the
series aren't based on the books, this frame is from the web-age The Hounds of
Baskerville. Photograph: Colin Hutton/BBC
Jeremy Brett
Most readers agreed that Jeremy Brett is
the one and only TV Holmes. "Brett was the definitive Sherlock Holmes, and
his dramatisations were the truest to the originals. Personally, I can no
longer visualise Holmes (or Watson) differently. I guess I'd also say 'read
them in order', but my favourite has always been The Sign of Four," said
ItsAnOutrage2. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
Vasily Livanov
"Where I live, in Moscow, most people would prefer Vasily
Livanov [pictured] in the 1980s Soviet TV series and tell me, as if this is
some kind of proof, that Livanov was given an MBE by our sovereign for his
portrayal. Check him out on YouTube. But no, I can't stand that Soviet series,
for me (language issues aside) it suffers from [Basil] Rathbone syndrome –
Holmes looks and sounds the part but is surrounded by fools, Watson and
Lestrade are portrayed as bumbling ignoramuses in order to show up the great man's
talent. It's all wrong," said frustratedartist. Photograph: Alamy
The Hound of the Baskervilles. Basil
Rathbone
Speaking of Rathbone, here he is in the
1939 film of The Hound of the Baskervilles, directed by Sydney Lanfield.
Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext
The Valley of Fear
For some, the Brett series is actually so
enduring that they can't separate the actor from the character: "I think
the only ones I've actually read are The Valley of Fear and The Blue Carbuncle,
both of which are excellent. Though (...) I can't help reading them with the
voices of Brett and either of the two who played Watson ringing in my
head", said judgeDAmNation Photograph: Guardian
