Anthony Horowitz | The Spectator columnists & writers

I love Suffolk, not just for its beauty but for the stories to be found all around me. Every day I swim with my two-year-old labrador in the river Alde with views of the strange pagodas built on Orford Ness, a long strip of shingle. Amazingly, components of the nuclear bomb were tested here during the second world war. Just up the coast is the wonderfully named Cobra Mist, a radar station active during the Cold War. If you’re lucky enough to go inside, you’ll find computers and surveillance equipment abandoned in the 1970s with lights still blinking and spools turning like something out of The Avengers. The US stealth bomber was apparently tested here. In 1980, UFOs were spotted above Orford on their way to Rendlesham forest.

How can James Bond survive?

I have just got back from Cannes, where I was the president of a jury, judging TV dramas. I’ve never had an experience like it. I was put up at the Majestic Hotel, overlooking La Croisette. I had a limousine to take me all of 100 yards to the Grand Palais for screenings and when I chose to walk, I was provided with a bodyguard. I even had my own hairdresser and make-up artist for the nightly photoshoot on the pink carpet. It was all ridiculous of course but it gave me a rare glimpse of celebrity and its pernicious allure. We writers are usually consigned to the engine room, toiling away with sweaty faces and blackened fingers. How lovely, just for once, to be given a sunbed on the first-class deck. I had a novel experience when I arrived at Nice airport.

Building Sizewell C would be a nuclear-sized disaster

I love Suffolk. This Christmas I will be there with my family and we’ll almost certainly walk up the coast, joining dog-walkers, bird-watchers, hikers and even swimmers in one of the most beautiful and unspoiled parts of the UK. The secret of Suffolk is its relative inaccessibility. No major motorway connects it and once you arrive you’re committed to a sprawling network of country lanes that twist through heathland and grazing marsh, mudflats and reedbeds. Minsmere, a nature reserve that’s home to 6,000 wildlife species, is among its glories. The nightjar, the woodlark, the Dartford warbler and the silver-studded butterfly are just some of the rare species found there. At least for the time being. Not just the heritage coast, but quite possibly the entire county, could be changed for ever by the arrival of two new European pressurised reactors (EPRs).

The Cummings road trip debacle is my last straw

I can’t remember the day I realised Santa Claus wasn’t real but I will never forget the moment I lost my belief in the Conservative party. It happened very recently — this morning, in fact. It was an odd day anyway which began with my reading an email from Mary Wakefield, inviting me to write this diary, even as she was appearing on my TV screen: an unnerving experience. Should I accept? Should I pretend that I’m ignorant of the biggest news story of the moment? I’m reassured that the one of the most trenchant and earliest attacks on Dominic Cummings’s road trip was written by Alex Massie and appeared on The Spectator website. It was an extraordinary article and kudos to The Spectator for publishing it. But much, much worse than the incident itself has been the government’s handling of it and it was watching the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, being interviewed by Andrew Marr a few minutes later that did it for me.

In defence of modern children’s books

A few years ago, I was surprised to open a newspaper and read that the head teacher of a London public school had decided to ban my books from his library. He described the adventures of Alex Rider, which have sold around 20 million- copies worldwide, in terms so derogatory that I have no mind to repeat them. Suffice it to say that the article quite put me off my cornflakes. But the strange thing was that — once I had got past the sheer offensiveness of his language and a mindset that believed that banning books could ever have good connotations — I was actually quite sympathetic to his wider point of view. Everyone agrees that children benefit from reading, but we seldom discuss what exactly we would like them to read.

If parliament were more modern, might it become less aggressive?

I’m writing this in Crete where a late summer has seen brilliant sunshine and temperatures reaching 25°C — but can I enjoy it? The unrelenting diet of gloom coming at me from every direction leads me to question even the dazzling blue Aegean and the cloudless sky. It’s surely a sign of global warming and the possibility that we are, quite possibly, doomed. I worry about Jeremy Corbyn. Will he be in Downing Street by Christmas Day? Will Trump have started world war three? Will Orfordness lighthouse, which has stood valiantly on its little shingle spit since 1792, have finally fallen into the sea? Everywhere I look, the tide is drawing in. The collapse of Thomas Cook has left Crete — and the rest of Greece — in a fairly terrible state.

Writer’s Notebook | 27 June 2019

Someone should write a guide to the best literary festivals. Sydney and Auckland would certainly be there, along with Sri Lanka, Jaipur and Dubai. Later this year I’m off to Mumbai and I’ve been invited to Mandalay. I swear there are writers who never actually have time to write any more, they spend so much of the year shuffling around all these exotic places. I’ve just come back from the festival of writing at Borris, which I loved. It’s a beautiful house in County Carlow, two hours from Dublin, and the whole weekend was one long party in the company of Michael Morpurgo, Simon Schama, Carl Bernstein and others. Writing is such a lonely, solitary business that this comes as a great reward, though I was stumped by a ten-year-old with a killer question: ‘Have you ever written a book in which someone didn’t die?’ The answer, I was horrified to realise, was probably not.

Diary - 24 January 2019

Will I be allowed to take my dog to Europe after 29 March? A trivial question, you might think, in these feverish times, but one that might be an indicator of what the EU thinks of us and how/if they’re going to make us pay for leaving. I took Boss, my Battersea rescue, across France this Christmas and it couldn’t have been easier. The dog was barely noticed on the way out and given a fast, friendly check on the way back. Why should anything change? A pet on the road doesn’t get extra germs just because of the colour of its passport and yet nobody has any idea what’s going to happen. Are UK pet owners about to be punished for no good reason? And if so, what punishments might be extended to the rest of us pour encourager les autres.

The time I was convinced I heard a ghost

I have never really believed in ghosts, but I actually had a personal experience which I still find hard to explain. I was walking beside the river Kwai in Thailand with my wife. We had been told that a steam train travelled across the famous bridge once a week as a memorial to the POWs who had died — and we were keen to photograph it. So we were shocked when, quite suddenly, we heard it approaching, an hour earlier than had been expected. We both heard it quite clearly; the heavy panting of the locomotive, the rattle of the wheels. Very quickly, we ran up the slope, annoyed with ourselves. The engine got closer and closer. But when we reached the top, there was no train there. In fact, we were told, the train wasn’t coming at all that day.

Diary - 19 October 2017

New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, Dallas… I’m on a book tour in Donald Trump’s USA, which feels much like the USA I’ve visited many times before. The tour doesn’t go to any of the so-called ‘rust belt’ cities where Trump has his main support and the people I meet are quietly shocked, apologetic — as if their President is an elderly relative who has displayed horrible manners at the table. Washington is such a handsome, classical city, with its free museums and wonderful collections of art, that I feel a stab of pain as I drive past the White House and think about the man inside. A single protestor stands silently, at attention, outside the Lincoln memorial with a placard that concludes: ‘It’s time to end this national disgrace.

Diary - 22 June 2017

Five years after I swore I’d finished with him, it’s odd to be back on the road with Alex Rider. It’s also quite confusing. In the 16 years it’s taken me to write the books, Alex has aged just 15 months while I’ve experienced 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the Arab spring, Brexit, Presidents Obama and Trump, and Theresa May. Until a few months ago, I would have said that life feels much the same in the UK where Alex and I live. But three terrorist attacks, the election and the horrendous fire at Grenfell Tower threaten to tear us apart. Even the queen was heckled when she visited the disaster site... surely a totemic moment. I have a very slender, personal connection with one of the people who died at Grenfell Tower.

The Netflix revolution: Why British TV struggles to keep up

There have been two revolutions in television during my lifetime. The first happened in 1975 when Sony launched its Betamax video system — which allowed viewers to record shows and see them when they wanted. Of course, Betamax was found to be clunky and unreliable and it was soon replaced by VHS but, without realising it, the networks had lost control of their audience. No longer would we watch the films they wanted us to watch when they wanted us to watch them. Never again, as the technology spread, would the whole nation come together as one to find out what the newscasters had been up to on Morecambe and Wise. The second revolution has been even more profound — and it’s happening right now. It can be defined in one word: Netflix.

The Netflix revolution

I always defended Michael Gove. Then I met him | 30 June 2016

This piece first appeared in The Spectator on 15 March 2014. A few weeks ago, I was a guest at a huge tea party for children’s authors, publishers and commentators at the South Bank, but the atmosphere, over the cupcakes and finger sandwiches, was decidedly frosty. There were three keynote speakers and their speeches all targeted a man so vile and destructive that the audience visibly recoiled every time his name was mentioned. He was, of course, Michael Gove — and I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone that I had always rather admired him and, moreover, was about to interview him for this magazine. It might be better to keep quiet in much the same way that Vidkun Quisling would have been well advised not to mention his wartime visits to Berlin.

Books will survive the age of the Kindle

The Kindle doesn't seem to be doing too well. According to Waterstones, sales of the e-reader have virtually disappeared, while in America, the Nook is losing $70 million a year. I’m not sure whether this is something to mourn or to celebrate; a triumph of bibliophilia over the new technology or the loss of an opportunity to promote reading. My old Kindle is useful on planes, but the technology is actually quite clumsy: the pages sometimes refuse to swipe and I’ve never quite got used to finding my place at ‘location 15,597’ or wherever. Anyway, I’ve always believed that books have an aesthetic quality, that they are more than the sum of their contents. I notice more and more bookshops are selling handsomely bound volumes of classics and the demand for signed copies seems to be insatiable.

London Notebook | 10 December 2015

I’ve spent much of the autumn and winter shooting my new TV series for BBC1. New Blood looks at the so-called ‘Y’ generation and focuses on two 25-year-olds who fight crime but who spend as much time worrying about their university loans, finding somewhere to live, arguing with each other and trying to kick-start their careers. It’s been fun watching our two young stars — Mark Strepan and Ben Tavassoli, watch those names — grow into the parts and I’ve thrown everything at them. They’ve cycled and run miles, been shot at, drugged, kidnapped, drenched, tortured and blown up. They’ve jumped off the roof of a hotel, escaped from a burning car and fought naked in a Turkish hammam. To their credit, they’ve never once complained .

What’s behind the Boris Johnson show?

Coming in from the pouring rain, I make my way to the office on the eighth floor of City Hall. With its curving windows, many books and bust of Pericles tucked away in a corner, it reminds me both of a classroom and the cockpit of a spacecraft. Its occupant is waiting for me, looking a little crumpled but less dishevelled than I had expected. He greets me very pleasantly but this is what I’m thinking. Here is the most famous person I have ever interviewed. In his own way, he is almost as iconic as the Queen or Churchill, the nodding dog in those insurance commercials. He is Boris, one of a tiny handful of politicians/celebrities instantly known by their first name. This is the man who dangled from a tripwire with two Union Jacks in his hands, who waved that gigantic flag in front of about a billion people in Beijing.

Anthony Horowitz’s diary: Keeping James Bond’s secrets for the Smersh of publishing

It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy. As my family knows, I’m hopeless at keeping secrets and I’ve found it almost impossible hanging on to this one for the past few months. Even now I’m forbidden to reveal the title, the story, the date it takes place or any of the characters… and I’ll probably get into trouble even for writing this. Believe me, Orion Books and their legal department are more sinister than Smersh. In fact I did quite well and only dropped one clue to someone who follows me on Twitter. He asked me what my big secret was and I told him the answer was oobvious. As I hoped, he thought it was a typing error. Anyway, I must put Bond behind me as it doesn’t come out until next September and I’m launching my new book, Moriarty, at the end of the month.

Anthony Horowitz’s Diary: Dinner with Saddam, anyone?

I have written a play, but a month after it was sent to half a dozen theatres, I have heard nothing. Either they’re being slow or they’re so shocked that they cannot bring themselves to respond. The play is called Dinner With Saddam and takes place in Baghdad on the evening of the Allied bombardment. It’s a comedy. Is it even possible, I wonder, for an English writer to portray an Arab family in a humorous way without laying himself open to charges of racism? And when all things are considered, was it good or bad timing to send the play out just one day before the Isis forces launched their first bloody attack? But I cannot see any way to write about the horror of Iraq except through comedy. Tony Blair cropped up on Radio 4 this week in his role as Middle East peace envoy — and that’s a joke, isn’t it? My jaw drops as I hear him arguing that the 2003 war had absolutely nothing to do with the vacuum of power and the collapse of internal security which has led directly to the disastrous situation in which Iraq now finds itself.

I always defended Michael Gove. Then I met him

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3" title="Toby Young and Fraser Nelson discuss Michael Gove's personality and the attacks from all sides"] Listen [/audioplayer]A few weeks ago, I was a guest at a huge tea party for children’s authors, publishers and commentators at the South Bank, but the atmosphere, over the cupcakes and finger sandwiches, was decidedly frosty. There were three keynote speakers and their speeches all targeted a man so vile and destructive that the audience visibly recoiled every time his name was mentioned. He was, of course, Michael Gove — and I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone that I had always rather admired him and, moreover, was about to interview him for this magazine.

Anthony Horowitz’s notebook: Have our schools lost all faith in culture?

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen’s Music, recently wrote about the almost total ignorance of young people when it comes to classical music, but I think he was wrong when he worried that Mozart and Beethoven were becoming ‘the preserve of the better off’. The truth is that if there’s a lack of interest in the classics, it crosses all classes and income brackets. Not so long ago, I had dinner with the sixth form of one of our leading public schools. I asked them if they could name one opera by Verdi. This was met by total silence. All right, I said, who can name any opera at all? Another long silence — until, at last, the head boy put up his hand. ‘How about Phantom of the Opera?’ The problem is not one of elitism, I think, but of too much pragmatism.

Anthony Horowitz’s diary: graffiti, Hiroshima and the next series of Foyle’s War

It was a perfect spring day in Hiroshima last week. I was there for my 25th wedding anniversary, which may sound odd, but my wife and I both work on Foyle’s War, which is now set in the atomic age, so it seemed appropriate. We strolled together around the A-Bomb Dome, the twisted, iconic ruin that is all that is left of the old city, then entered the Peace Memorial Museum, built in 1955, the year I was born. I found the whole experience incredibly moving: the child’s bike dug out of the ruins, the watch that had stopped at 8.15, the piece of wall that still carries the ‘ghost’ of the man who was sitting against it when the bomb fell. I was rather surprised to come away with the view that we should abandon our nuclear deterrent not because it is too expensive or irrelevant, as I used to believe, but simply because the ownership of such a monstrous weapon diminishes us.

...to the other

Here’s the paradox. By any standards, Arthur Conan Doyle was an extraordinary man; a doctor, a politician, a keen sportsman (he once took the wicket of W.G. Grace and he was skiing almost before the word was invented), a social campaigner, a spiritualist and of course a very great writer, not just of detective stories but history, horror and even poetry. And yet the slate of his life was wiped almost entirely clean by his single, greatest creation, Sherlock Holmes. Doyle himself was aware of it. ‘I am in the middle of the last Holmes story,’ he wrote to his mother in 1892. ‘After which the gentleman vanishes, never, never to reappear. I am weary of his name.’ It didn’t work, of course. Even the Reichenbach Falls couldn’t quite finish him off and 120 years later Holmes is still bigger than the man who created him.

Kindles for kids

‘How do we get children reading?’ the minister asked me, just a week after Michael Gove had got them reciting poetry, more or less by making it illegal for them not to. This was his number two, Nick Gibb, who had invited me to the Ministry of Education for a 40-minute chat. I’m not sure how impressed he was with my thoughts as I’ve heard nothing since, so it seems fair enough to share them with Spectator readers. Who knows? Maybe Mr Gibb is one of them. Politicians have a way of paying lip service to the subject of illiteracy because it is one of those issues that couldn’t be simpler. We want children to read because it’s good for them… right? Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown presided over something called ‘The National Year of Reading’ and I dutifully turned up at Downing Street to be photographed with a smiling (or grimacing) PM and a crowd of kids.

The trail

A Christmas short story by Anthony Horowitz Illustrated by Carolyn GowdyThey were spending their first Christmas together in Antigua, Simon and Jane Maxwell, enjoying not just a holiday but a honeymoon after a courtship that had taken them both by surprise. It was his second marriage, her first — and perhaps it was because she had waited so long that she had jumped into it so readily. Of course, she was a modern woman with a perfectly successful career… in publishing, as it happened. She might be single but she would never have described herself as ‘on the shelf’. It wasn’t as if she kept cats or anything dreadful like that. But her 40th birthday was fast approaching, her two younger sisters were not only married but with child (her father was a vicar) and she had begun to feel that if an opportunity did come her way she might as well grab it for better or for worse — reflecting at the time that it was an appropriate choice of words.

Diary - 5 November 2011

How nice to find myself at the front of The Spectator rather than the back, where I make occasional appearances, albeit under a pseudonym, next to the crossword. I love these quirky, waste-of-time competitions, which at £25 for 150 words must make the contributors pro rata among the highest paid in the magazine. It’s a shame, though, that the same four or five people seem to win all the time. What else do they do with their lives apart from construct haikus about literary figures or short stories without using the letter ‘e’? Who are Basil Ransome-Davis, Noel Petty and Bill Greenwell? I have a feeling I was reading their entries in Punch when I was about eight years old. ‘Not by hatred are they led, their problem is a dearth of thread…’ Almost 50 years later, I can’t get that line out of my head.

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