Honeysuckle Weeks, one of the stars of the long-running ITV series Foyle’s War, insists that she has never seen its creator Anthony Horowitz without a pen in his hand. Horowitz laughs when I tell him. “I think that’s probably near enough to the truth. I am obsessional. If you look at how much work I’ve done in the different fields I’ve written in, you can’t escape the fact that I do seem to be something of a fanatic when it comes to writing. It is what I most love doing. A pen is never very far away from me.”
He is certainly prolific. So much so that he’s not entirely certain how many books he’s written. It may be “54 or 55,” he says. He is the author of the bestselling Alex Rider series, often described as James Bond for YA readers. But he has also written, with the blessing of the Fleming estate, three very well-received Bond novels. The most recent of those, With a Mind to Kill, was published in May.
Since then, Where Seagulls Dare, the eighth in his Diamond Brothers series – gag-filled detective stories for children – has been published. And in August, The Twist of a Knife is out. It is the fourth in the Hawthorne and Horowitz crime series which features as a character a writer called Anthony Horowitz. Three novels in a year – not bad going.
Aside from the books, there is also his TV writing. Foyle’s War, a period crime drama starring Weeks and Michael Kitchen, was a primetime hit that ran to eight series. Horowitz wrote almost all the episodes. He has also written for Midsomer Murders and Poirot and his series Magpie Murders is currently on Britbox. He keeps a human skull on his desk to remind him to work hard because life is short. It clearly works.
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Horowitz says he “discovered” he was a writer at the prep school to which he was sent at the age of eight. He hated it and was frequently beaten by the headmaster. Even decades later, a visit to the place provoked a physical reaction and he found himself breathless and sweating, with his heart racing.
“When you are told by your teachers that you are no good at anything and you are feeling lonely and worthless, to discover you actually have a skill is very important,” he says. “For me, that skill was telling stories, which I did in the dormitory after lights out. It was always the same story, really. Two boys at the school escape every night and go off and have an adventure of some sort.”
Now 67, he had his first novel published at the age of 22 but did not become a success overnight. “It took me 11 books to become a bestselling writer, yet my publisher stuck by me for book after book with sales that didn’t really make me viable. I don’t think a young writer today would be given as many chances as I was.”
His first TV gig was on Robin of Sherwood, the 80s reinterpretation of the Robin Hood myth that added a generous dollop of pagan mysticism. With its theme tune by Clannad, it retains a cult following to this day.
Horowitz was hired because he’d written a short story about Robin Hood that the producer had read. “I went from no television experience whatsoever to writing a show being watched by 15 million people every week. What a lucky break that was. I wrote five episodes of the show and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a happier TV experience.”
He is also a journalist and for a long time was a dependable right-of-centre voice for Conservative-supporting newspapers – though not any more.
“It is upsetting for me to have reached a point where I realise I was wrong all that time because we’ve arrived at a government that calls itself Conservative but which I, like many people, am unable to recognise,” he says. “I can’t understand how the Cabinet and the Prime Minister can pretend to be espousing Tory values – the values I thought I believed in – yet are doing so many awful things.
“In Where Seagulls Dare, right-wing politicians are the villains. It is a type of politics that is divisive, aggressive, dishonest and ineffective and, in the long term, useless to the future of this country. The Conservative Party now is only inward-looking. It talks about the country and what people want but actually, all the Conservative Party is about is the Conservative Party.
“Can you tell me one newspaper story of the last 10 weeks that hasn’t been about Boris Johnson’s survival or Boris Johnson’s dishonesty or Boris Johnson’s partying? I’m so fed up with those two words that even speaking to you now and using them makes me feel slightly nauseous.”
One of the two sons he has with his wife, TV producer Jill Green, is a special adviser to Rishi Sunak. Do Horowitz’s changing views make family dinners awkward? “We don’t really talk politics,” he says. “I think Cassian does a fantastic job and I’m very proud of him. It’s really interesting to watch his career, although I have to say with a certain amount of trepidation because I think the environment he is in is so poisonous so, obviously, I am concerned for him.”
Horowitz found himself in the news a couple of weeks ago when, at the Hay Festival, he criticised “cancel culture” and the culture of fear he believes it engenders.
“The worry that I have – what I was talking about at Hay – is simply that writers should be leading the agenda, not cowed by it. People who create culture – painting, writing music, books, films – should not be living in fear. If they are, something has gone very wrong.
“If you have a position that someone else doesn’t agree with, the response now seems to be so angry, so threatening and so unreasonable.”
He is appalled by the venom directed at, for example, JK Rowling. “Whatever her views are, she should not be put in a position where death threats are made,
where she becomes the subject of vitriol and abuse. Nobody has done more for literature and literacy in this country. And I think her charity work is extraordinary.”
He is no slouch himself when it comes to charity. Horowitz is a patron of Kidscape, an anti-bullying outfit. And he also does work for Suffolk Home-Start, a charity supporting families with young children. Home-Start will receive all the royalties from Where Seagulls Dare – so those right-wing baddies are at least going to end up doing some good.
Where Seagulls Dare (Walker Books, £7.99) is out now
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