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Anthony Horowitz, OBE (born 5 April 1955) is an English
novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense. His work for
young adult readers includes The Diamond Brothers series, the Alex Rider
series, and The Power of Five series (a.k.a. The Gatekeepers).
His work for adults includes the play Mindgame (2001), the
two Sherlock Holmes novels The House of Silk (2011) and Moriarty (2014), Magpie
Murders (2016) and The Word is Murder (2017). He is also the most recent author
chosen to write a James Bond novel by the Ian Fleming estate, titled Trigger
Mortis (2015).
He has also written for television, contributing scripts to
ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot and Midsomer Murders. He was the creator and
writer of the ITV series Foyle's War, Collision and Injustice and the BBC
series New Blood.
Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, into a wealthy
Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper-middle class lifestyle. As
an overweight and unhappy child, Horowitz enjoyed reading books from his
father's library. At the age of 8, Horowitz was sent to Orley Farm, a boarding
preparatory school 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, a public school in
Rugby, Warwickshire. Horowitz's mother 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 8, Horowitz knew he wanted to be
a writer, realizing "the only time when I'm totally happy is when I'm
writing". He graduated from the University of York with a lower second
class degree in English literature and art history in 1977, where he was in
Vanbrugh College.
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 produced Foyle's
War, the series Horowitz wrote for ITV. They have two sons. 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[11]
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.
1994–present
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. There
are ten books where Alex Rider is the protagonist, and an eleventh is connected
to the Alex Rider series (although not part of it) : Stormbreaker (2000), Point
Blanc (2001), Skeleton Key (2002), Eagle Strike (2003), Scorpia (2004) Ark
Angel (2005), Snakehead (2007), Crocodile Tears (novel) (2009), Scorpia Rising
(2011), and the 'connector, Russian Roulette (2013). Horowitz had stated that
Scorpia Rising was to be the last book in the Alex Rider series prior to
writing Russian Roulette about the life of Yassen Gregorovich., but he has
returned to the series with Never Say Die (2017).
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, Magpie Murders, is
about "a whodunit writer who is murdered while he's writing his latest
whodunit". Having previously spoken about the book in 2005, Horowitz
expected to finish it in late 2015, and it was published in October 2016.
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.
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. A follow-up novel, Moriarty, was published in 2014.
In October 2014, the Ian Fleming estate commissioned
Horowitz to write a James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, which was released in
2015. It will be followed by a second novel, Forever and A Day, which is set to
come out on 31st May 2018.
Horowitz was appointed Officer of the Order of the British
Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to literature.
Writing for television and film
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. In 2002, the detective series Foyle's War launched, set during the Second
World War.
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.
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Anthony Horowitz: 'People used to
disagree. Now they send death threats'
By Danuta Kean
He had a privileged upbringing but then his family lost
everything. As he takes his biggest risk yet, the writer talks about surviving
his childhood – and the storm he caused about writing black characters
@Danoosha
Sun 27 Aug 2017 16.00 BST Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018
13.19 GMT
‘I was called names when I was eight,” says Anthony
Horowitz. “I will not tell you them now because I would be physically sick if
they passed my lips.” The writer pauses momentarily, his brown eyes fixing
mine. “I just couldn’t do it. These things do hurt.”
Tall, slim and wearing black jeans, the 62-year-old could,
until this moment, have passed for a much younger man. But as he recalls his
childhood, suddenly the years seem to catch up with him. We meet in the London
offices of the TV production company run by his wife, Jill Green, to chat about
his latest novel, The Word Is Murder. We are a stone’s throw from their
penthouse in a renovated bacon factory. It seems rather fitting – because he
certainly brings home the bacon. Horowitz, who has houses in Crete, Suffolk and
London, is one of the highest earning writers in Britain.
On the walls are testimonies to his success: framed covers
of his multi-million-selling Alex Rider novels about the boy recruited by MI6,
whose adventures were turned into a film in 2006; a giant poster for his
wartime detective drama Foyle’s War; and shelves laden with books and DVDs of
his many hit shows, including New Blood, Injustice and Midsomer Murders. But
for all this success, he is still haunted by a childhood of superficial
comfort. His father was a solicitor, known as a something of a fixer for prime
minister Harold Wilson. His nefarious business dealings weren’t revealed until
his death: his millions had been squirrelled into Swiss bank accounts under
assumed names; the money was never recovered and the shock of the family’s
bankruptcy for Horowitz, then 23, gave him a lifelong horror of debt – and a
ferocious work ethic.
What was lost was considerable: the family home, White
Friars, was so big that when demolished it was replaced by no fewer than 16
five-bedroom houses. Both his parents were away much of the time, leaving
Horowitz and his two siblings in the care of servants and his grandmother, a
woman of such hellish cruelty he used her as the template for the eponymous
villain in his children’s novel Granny.
Being packed off to boarding school at the age of eight
could have been an escape. But this was the 1960s, when beatings were a way of
life in such schools. At Orley Farm in Harrow, Horowitz was often left bleeding
after six of the best. He worries that remembering such things sounds like
whingeing, when other children lived in dire poverty. But, as the patron of the
anti-bullying charity Kidscape, he says: “Emotional cruelty ignores wealth and
position.” Such vicious treatment of children in boarding schools in the 60s,
he believes, has had a detrimental impact on society. “It is why so much of
this country is dysfunctional.”
It was not just the beatings that scarred the writer: being
plump and Jewish made him an easy target for other boys. At night, he escaped
by telling stories to schoolmates after lights out in his dorm. In those tales,
he found salvation and developed an ambition to be a writer. It is clearly
painful to recall. Why does he talk about it? “For one very simple reason,” he
snaps back, with barely concealed irritation. “People like yourself always ask
about it.”
I ask if he’d rather not be asked about his childhood and
there is a long pause. “It’s not my business to tell you what you can and can’t
ask me,” he says eventually. Written down, the words look harsher than they
sound. “No, I’m happy to talk about it because…” He pauses, pressing his hands
into his lap like a schoolboy sitting outside the head’s office. The PR sharing
the room with us, nods and he enters into a convoluted explanation about how he
regards the granting of an interview for publicity as a kind of contract in
which “I provide you with the material you want”.
The PR, I suspect, is here to protect a writer with a
reputation for shooting from the lip, making him a gift to headline-writers,
which is why his audiences at book festivals are always peppered with reporters
scribbling away. This very day, the Times is running with a story picked up
from an event at the Edinburgh festival, in which he contested that theatres
should not give critics free tickets because a savaging can kill a show. Within
days, the Stage responded with an article by an actor in his play Dinner With
Saddam castigating Horowitz for writing a flop that “shoehorned the tragedy of
the 2003 invasion of Iraq into the format of a bawdy 1970s British sitcom”.
Although the father of two insists he is inured to such coverage,
the admission that his son Cass offered to sit in on our interview suggests
that it does get to him. In May, the Mail on Sunday reported that he accused
his publisher, Walker, of pressuring him into dropping a black character
because of “cultural appropriation”.
A Twitter storm erupted, led by Rivers of London writer Ben
Aaronovitch. “If you don’t feel confident or just don’t want to write black
characters, just say so,” he seethed. “Don’t pretend it’s political correctness
gone mad.” Authors of colour, including Orangeboy writer Patrice Lawrence,
accused the Rugby alumnus of hijacking the issue of diversity in fiction.
Horowitz sighs when I ask about the claim, strenuously
denied by Walker. “I didn’t say anything that can be construed as contrary,” he
says. “I was merely drawing attention to this movement of cultural
appropriation, which is very strong in America.” His voice rises an octave and
he adds: “I am not saying that it is shocking or wrong or disgusting. I did
say, however, that its natural outcome would be that I would end up only
writing about 63-year-old writers who live in Clerkenwell and have two sons.”
He praises Lionel Shriver – “whose work I love” – for speaking out on the
subject and insists that, far from disagreeing with political correctness, he
regards it as “absolutely 100% right”.
The mobbing disturbs him, though. He thinks it’s symptomatic
of a rage in society that has grown since the Brexit vote. “There is a rigidity
in the way we have begun to think and speak. If we step outside certain lines
on certain issues, we find not just people disagreeing, but disagreeing to the
extent of death threats. When somebody says something untoward in the press,
and I am not saying this about myself, people don’t just say that was a stupid
thing to say. They say, ‘Lose your job.’ They want you to never ever have an
income again.”
It is a theme that emerges in the new novel. The Word Is
Murder is first in a series about Hawthorne, an ex-cop turned gumshoe who seems
to be straight out of central casting: ageing loner, problems with authority,
smoker, secretive, divorced. But, as the novel progresses, the carapace is
demolished and, Horowitz promises, the next eight or nine books (he is
undecided) will provide surprising revelations.
The book could be seen as Horowitz’s most audacious yet,
since he has taken the unusual step of placing himself at the centre of the
story, narrating Hawthorne’s exploits. It is an attempt at meta-fiction more
usually the preserve of self-consciously literary writers like Martin Amis or
Bret Easton Ellis and the author admits being nervous about the reception of
his 46th novel.
The book certainly has its moments, in particular the
laugh-out-loud funeral scene and a chapter in which Steven Spielberg and Peter
Jackson discuss Horowitz’s screenplay for a Tintin movie. It is based on a real
meeting he had in Paris.
Writing saved me.
Simple as that. When I was 10, and inadequate in many ways, writing was a
lifeline
With 10 million words under his belt, Horowitz has long
toyed with penning a guide that details everything from how to plot a novel to
how to deal with TV executives. “I even started to write it. But it was dull
and slightly arrogant and, at the end of the day, it just didn’t interest me.”
He laughs, unfazed by failure, which he regards as a healthy corrective.
Whatever happens with this book, it will not hold back the
creator of Alex Rider, who rattles off the projects he wishes to complete: a
new children’s trilogy, more novels for adults, and several plays. As he talks,
I can’t help thinking of that chubby schoolboy who tells stories to keep his
spirits up in a school he will one day describe as a “cesspit”.
“My writing has saved me,” he says. “Simple as that.” He
looks sheepish, before breaking into a smile. “When I was 10, and inadequate in
many ways, writing was a lifeline. Now I have my life pretty much sorted out.
In a world where everything seems to be uncertain, writing is the only
certainty I have.”
The Word Is Murder by is published by Century. It’s
available at the Guardian Bookshop.
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Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers: Andrew Marr’s Paperback
Heroes committed heinous crimes against genre fiction: review
Jasper Rees
17 OCTOBER 2016 • 10:00PM
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/10/17/sleuths-spies--sorcerers-andrew-marrs-paperback-heroes-committed/
Have we reached peak Marr? On Sunday mornings on BBC One,
Andrew Marr is the new David Frost. On Mond
ay mornings on Radio 4, he’s the new Melvyn Bragg. The rest
of the time, he’s a rent-a-presenter on a wide array of matters. Maybe they’re
getting full use of him in return for an enormous salary, but Sleuths, Spies
& Sorcerers: Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes (BBC Four) finds him finally
spread too thin.
In each part, Marr considers a branch of fiction that’s
never up for the posh prizes. Next week it’s fantasy epics, the week after spy
novels, but he started with detective fiction. The first half was devoted to
Agatha Christie, whose plots he anatomised before cheerfully admitting that he
didn’t actually like her books. I’m no Poirot but that looks like a crime
against the licence fee.
Marr pottered on through the century, investigating the
genre’s rules and tropes (the locked room conundrum, the flawed detective,
etc). To illustrate various plots he moved among a cast of actors who were
dressed in full period garb, but clearly there wasn’t a budget for the whole
century so Marr did a bit of acting himself. If he never again pollutes the airwaves
with his array of appalling accents, so much the better. He later illustrated
his bullet points with copious clips of Marlowe, Wexford, Rebus and co, with
the result that the second half felt more like a hasty history of TV detective
drama.
It was never clear if Marr had a clue what he was talking
about. His concluding thesis was that, a century from now, crime fiction is
where historians will look to find out how we lived, which seems a sweeping
snub to literary novelists. There are a lot of these overblown claims for
popular entertainment about: a recent BBC documentary said exactly the same
about sitcoms.
The best feature of this episode was a series of absorbing
interviews with the great practitioners of crime fiction including Sophie
Hannah, Val McDermid and Ian Rankin, welcome partly for the sound and sight of
Marr listening to experts, not larking about like a performing monkey.
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