Anthony Horowitz: ‘Authors should write what they want and have the right to offend’

"Water is fantastic for writers," says Anthony Horowitz, sitting on the terrace of his cottage in Orford, on the Suffolk coast, and admiring his view. 

Of the many worlds he has invented - 56 books and counting, and countless hours of television, plays, radio, you name it - the one he has made for himself may be the most charmed. 

It's a sunny Friday in early August, and he has the best spot in town. Below us, visitors eat crab sandwiches and watch the final stages of a dinghy race. Halyards clank. The tourist board would approve.

"This view is beautiful and historical, but it is also full of stories," he adds, pointing to buildings on the horizon. 

"Those two pagodas are left over from the Second World War. They tested parts of the atomic bomb there. And there's Cobra Mist [an experimental radar detection station]. Up the road is the prison where Jeffrey Archer served his time." For a writer preoccupied with spies, wars and intrigues, it is a fertile spot.

For the rest of us, it is mostly enviable. If you have ever had a daydream about the life of a bestselling author, Horowitz, 67, appears to be living it. He is just back from eight weeks in Crete and Croatia and has the tan to prove it. He looks fit, the result of frequent swims in the sea and miles of yomping the coastline with Chase, his black labrador, a lockdown acquisition whose tail knocks happily into our calves as he greets us at the front door. In fact, in a blue T-shirt and baseball cap, the author looks more like someone used to being in front of the camera than writing the words, an impression not weakened by his wearing of sunglasses for the duration of our conversation.

Best known for Alex Rider, his multi-million-selling series of teen-spy stories, he has a new novel out, The Twist of a Knife, the fourth in his Hawthorne series of whodunits. He has been married to Jill Green, a producer, for 34 years. They have two adult sons, both successful in their own right, one of whom, Nick, is getting married in a few weeks' time.

For years, Horowitz's major professional setback was that the first Alex Rider film didn't lead to the creation of a Marvel-style empire. 

"I wasn't disappointed in the film, but I was disappointed that it didn't spawn a franchise and I couldn't buy myself a superyacht," he says. Even that wrinkle has been ironed out, thanks to Amazon, whose version of Alex Rider has run for two series, with another on the way. 

After having had the cottage for nearly 30 years - there is another home in Farringdon, London - Horowitz is even inching towards losing his "outsider" status in Suffolk. "I have a plot reserved for me in Orford cemetery," he laughs. "When I'm in that plot, I'll finally be eligible."

Given this idyllic situation, it is a surprise that, as a public figure, Horowitz has rarely been more embattled. At the Hay Festival earlier this year, he launched a broadside against censorship in publishing. "I'm very, very scared by what you're calling cancel culture," he said, in response to a question. "I think what's happening to writers is extremely dangerous: where certain words are hidden, where certain thoughts are not allowed any more, certain activities obviously to do with gender or with ethnicity." 

He added that when he was writing his latest children's book, Where Seagulls Dare, his publisher had sent him notes that "absolutely shocked [him]" about "things I could and could not say". Children's publishers are more scared than anybody, he added. But after a career immersing himself in other conflicts, historical and imagined, he has now become a skirmisher in the culture war.

Would he write a black character today?

"It is wrong that writers are running scared," he says now, after a pause to gather his thoughts. "It is wrong that writers should have to worry about what they are writing, and that they are following the agenda rather than setting it. It should be creative people who decide what is or is not acceptable. These days, the nervousness, the cancel culture, the fear of offending, of causing a Twitter storm, or the sudden laser-like focus that some writers attract - J K Rowling is the obvious example - strikes me as worrying and saddening. It's very sad. The reasons for this new intolerance are partly political and partly sociological. Social media has changed the way people debate. Arguments are now 'no or yes', 'black or white', 'good or bad'.

"I used to do a lot more political stuff," he adds. "I was on Question Time and Any Questions? and I wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. I don't do it any more, because there's no point. Even on the most basic issue, Brexit, if you come out stridently in one direction, there's a possibility you'll alienate half your audience. At the end of the day, I'm interested in the world and have a voice, which I'm sometimes tempted to use, but my first responsibility is to my publisher, to my booksellers, to my readers. Why would I want to halve my sales? I'm not saying I don't admire J K Rowling, although I'm not sure I completely understand why she has allowed this situation to develop. But I admire her courage. Maybe I should be braver.

"It's about the pointlessness [of engaging with these debates]," he says. "So many of these discussions are couched in ways that mean there's going to be no outcome other than anger and violence and prejudice. There are some areas that I won't go anywhere near, not because I don't have opinions, but because airing those opinions will do me and the world no good."

Which areas does he have in mind? "You can imagine," he says. "All the isms. This is the heart of what we are talking about. If I answer your question and say 'race', that opens that particular box. If I say 'trans', that's another box. Just saying that I'm not interested in those issues will possibly make my life difficult. You asked what I fear, and it's that. That's what has made life difficult for writers. In the old days, people could throw a sponge brick at the television. Now, they can go on the internet. Newspapers are never far behind. A lot of newspapers quote people from Twitter. Why are you doing that? You're the guys we are reading the paper for, not to hear what this guy foaming at the mouth thinks."

Would he write a black character today? "The fact I have to pause before I answer is sad," he says. "But in The Twist of a Knife, there is a Native American character, and the book had to have a sensitivity reading. I was quite taken aback by some of the suggestions, but I didn't argue with any of them, because I don't want to get involved in a row about ethnicity." At last he concludes that he would write a black character, if the story demanded it, but probably not a trans one. "I don't think I have enough understanding to do it.

"You're edging towards [the idea] that Richard III should only be played by a disabled actor," he says. "If I listened to the most strident voices, I would spend the rest of my life writing about white, Jewish, elderly writers living in Orford. I have it in mind to write a short story in which you realise, as it goes on, that everybody is the same person.

"I sound like I'm sitting uncomfortably on a fence with all this," he says. "Which I suppose describes where I am. Because I am a libertarian and I believe writers should write anything they want to write and they have the right to offend people, if they so wish. But because my stories matter more to me than my political stance, I tend to be careful." So far, his work has escaped censure. "Somehow, I've managed to avoid any character or scene that would now be objectionable. I don't know how that's happened."

Horowitz has written several novels in the Sherlock Holmes and James Bond series. The latter property, in particular, is not a bastion of right-on politics. "For me, it was critical that Bond existed in his own time frame, with his own prejudices," he says. 

"The Fleming books are very anti-Semitic in places, but I wasn't minded to have a character who was lambasted for being Jewish. The character of Pussy Galore appears in one of my books, but I wouldn't have invented her. The idea of a woman who has been gay for her entire life and then meets Bond and 15 minutes later is in bed with him would not play well with modern sensibilities. Being afraid [of writing] is one thing, but being observant is another. I don't want to offend people. I don't want to write something that makes people say 'that's racist'." One of the reasons Horowitz is drawn to historical pieces is that the rules are clearer.

"Period protects you from a lot of the things you've been asking, so I don't have to get into all this," he says. "And I can obey the rules of that time. Foyle's War [his long-running series of Second World War detective dramas for ITV] is one of the most successful things I ever did. I felt much more comfortable in the 1940s than the present day. Things were more clear. Or take Midsomer Murders, which I helped to create: that world of thatched cottages, croquet matches, spinsters on tricycles - even that word spinster is not one I would now use. Modern life is all about ambiguity; it's much more comforting to find easy answers in the past."

'It could blow up in my face'

For all he protests, there is clearly part of him that relishes getting into the mix. He has money, fame and options. It might be harder for writers starting out, but Horowitz would still be published, and be able to go on long Croatian sailing trips, if he didn't speak at literary festivals, or give newspaper interviews. "Who doesn't enjoy talking about their work and being asked their opinions, as if they have an opinion that matters," he says. "I have to try to be a little bit interesting, because that's the deal. But, these days, it could blow up in my face. I still enjoy it all, I'm just more aware of the dangers."

If Horowitz has steered himself into the fringes of the culture wars, it is not his fault he finds himself closer to politics than other novelists. His second son, Cass, 31, is a special adviser to Rishi Sunak, and credited with the former chancellor's surprisingly slick media operation. "I've always been concerned for [Cass], because he's working in a very febrile atmosphere," he says. "But I'm very proud of him. I find him formidable. And I'm delighted that when anyone mentions him, they always mention me and sometimes even my books." His elder son, Nick, 33, runs the creative agency The Clerkenwell Brothers, which he and Cass founded before Cass moved into politics.

"My view of fatherhood is that you get them to 18," he says. "That's all you need to do. I didn't really know my father [he died, bankrupt, when Horowitz was 22]. From my own childhood, it was important to me that we were close as a family, and that my sons would be kind and decent up to 18. After that, they're on their own. If they want to be evil or criminal or whatever, I did my best. But we're still very close."

He says he has found the leadership contest a "disheartening and deeply problematic" spectacle. "The Conservative Party is going to have to look at this idea that a tiny, tiny minority of 150,000 people choosing the prime minister is just not on," he says. "I don't think either of the candidates has distinguished themselves. Instead of talking realistically about the gigantic problems this country is facing and coming up with imaginative solutions, both candidates have chosen to do anything they can to appeal to this absurd minority. That said, I have a preference, as you might expect. Rishi Sunak seems more serious [than Liz Truss]. I've never met him. I feel sorry for him. I can't help but feel that Labour will be the winners at the end of this." Would he vote Labour? "Oh yes. Keir Starmer doesn't get enough credit for what he has achieved in a short space of time.

"Something has gone terribly wrong in politics and it has happened in the past five years," he adds. "Talking about writers and woke and that sort of stuff, that anger and unpleasantness starts in parliament. The worst result of Brexit is that the split has not healed. It opened this rancour, intolerance and unhappiness that hasn't gone away. That chasm is still there." On that subject, too, he is circumspect. "I just don't [talk about it]," he says. "It's not worth it. I don't want to upset the 52% of the country who voted for it."

If politics, and the politics of writing, cause him consternation, he is more confident about his books. The Twist of a Knife is a beautifully turned locked-room whodunit set in theatreland, starring his detective Daniel Hawthorne. As in his previous Hawthorne books, Horowitz writes himself into the tale as a character: an author accused of murdering a journalist, Harriet Throsby, who gives a play he has written a bad review. The mix of fact and fiction gives the book a playfulness, which has spilt out into the papers. The theatre critic Ann Treneman claimed in a recent column that Throsby was based on her, but Horowitz says this is rubbish. "It's ridiculous," he says. "I very carefully made sure it's not based on anybody."

He is already at work on a fifth Hawthorne novel, which promises even more metafictional fireworks. "That'll be my 57th book, and yet I can still smile about it," he says. "That's what my whole career has been about. What I'm good at doing is coming up with things that have never been done. I think I've done it lots of times. I'm always trying to push the boundaries of what a book can do. Even a murder mystery, how to make it more than just 'the butler did it'. That doesn't mean I have to go and throw stuff into the book that will cause upset.

"I still love writing," he says. "And one of the joys of my writing is I don't have to get too close to the edge of the precipice. At the end of the day, you just want to amuse people."

'The Twist of a Knife' is published on August 18 (Century)