Anthony Horowitz may well be Britain’s busiest writer. He has put his name to over fifty titles and projects in just over thirty years, from the gripping Alex Rider spy thrillers to hugely popular TV series such as Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. To many, Horowitz is simply the writer of our generation.
When I got the chance to speak to Horowitz, he was quite contentedly slogging away at a re-draft of a new novel, Oblivion, whilst working on three scripts for film and television. The looming workload clearly does not faze someone with such a passion for his craft. “I love words. I love the pure physicality of writing,” he enthuses.
Horowitz engaged with words from a very young age; during his time at a “particularly foul and abusive” preparatory school, Orley Farm, writing became an escape. After fighting through the difficulties of his early educational environment, he began a BA in English & History of Art at the University of York in 1974. It would be the drama societies that would come to define Horowitz’s time at the University. He remembers with pride his first play (titled Castaways) being performed at the still standing Drama Barn. “It made me initially want to go into theatre, I had no interest in writing children’s books. It is a peculiar hiccup in my career that has led me down an unexpected path.”
After leaving York behind, “disappointed” in his degree classification, Horowitz entered into advertising. The job was purely to fund his writing and, channelling that sense of adventure his characters so often display, he notes with sadness how he wished he had “taken more time after university to get into adventures, into hardships, simply to have more experience to bring to my writing.” However, he admits that one novel “Raven’s Gate, the first ‘Power of Five’ novel, was based on places I visited in York and around Yorkshire whilst I was there.”
Experience eventually came for Horowitz through the pure slog of reading widely and writing extensively. To Horowitz, directly understanding what you are writing about is the essential ingredient in good prose, “Just three weeks ago I was in Antarctica researching for a new book. I try and visit every location I write about.” As Horowitz continues to sketch out some other cardinal necessities for good writing, such as talent and self-endurance, it’s life experiences that stick out as having fundamental importance for his own philosophy of writing.
Diverging slightly, I was tentatively interested to hear Horowitz’s response to a pessimistic account of the future of publishing I had encountered in The Guardian, haranguing an industry “ruled by accountants” and lazy new writers. The crux of the piece was dismissed by Horowitz, who expressed his hope for the vitality of the industry – even with dangers the free spread of information online poses to traditional publisher’s profits.
“It is a changing field. By and large the internet is a force for good, though of course it will make a huge difference to areas such as quality and standards, but anything that gets books into people’s homes is a cause for hope.” Even so, it is evident Horowitz is a writer firmly in the mind set of Generation X and that he retains an archaic loyalty to the traditional platforms that have given him immense success.
However, despite this faith, his work has pioneered a very 21st century trend in writing. Horowitz’s prose appears to transcend form; its dramatic plot twists, fast paced prose and shifting action-packed narratives invites conversion onto the screen and often reads like a structured script.
“When I write, I think of myself as a camera. Looking down from a high angle on a school, as Alex [Rider] goes in, then cut to a close shot as he comes into the classroom, etc.” However, “Fundamentally, when writing, ‘a book is a book’, ‘a film is a film’.” Perhaps, he suggests, his works have such adaptability because he always works on a script and a book at the same time.
Yet, although he has enjoyed massive screenwriting success, his novels have struggled to make the transitions from page to screen. The film version of Stormbreaker, the first book of his famous Alex Rider series, received disappointing box office takings and lukewarm reviews, halting plans for a film series. Horowitz does not hold back when he attempts to explain the failure, “The film was not terrible. It was a hot month [and] a rather bad but massively successful Pirates of the Caribbean film had been released. The casting was often off, too. Mickey Rourke was a disaster choice.”
Perhaps, I conjectured, it was because his initial audience had grown up. By the time the film was released in 2006, those who were among the first to eagerly pick up copies of Stormbreaker were approaching late teens. Begrudgingly, Horowitz admits, “you had moved on.”
Such career stalls have not deterred those in the industry from looking to Horowitz when commissioning work. His most notable current projects include the recent release of a new Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk and his work on the Tintin franchise with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.Talking of taking up the legacy of Holmes, the first new novel to be endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate for decades, Horowitz displays his usual admirable sense of self confidence. “I knew I could do it. I have always read Victorian literature, it is a canon of work I first really got involved with during my studies at York.”
However he is plainly intimidated when discussing the movie moguls he is working alongside on Tintin. “I am very well aware that I am sitting between two mountains of cinema and I am the goat in the middle; probably a sacrificial goat, as I may be fired as one often is in this business.”
Before ending the interview, I had to touch on Alex Rider; as a fan of the novels from a young age, I had to admit my reading of them ceased after Ark Angel in 2005 as I moved onto more ‘adult’ fiction. Last year, Horowitz retired Rider in his ninth and final novel, Scorpia Rising. “It was time to move on. There are only so many gadgets, only so many bad guys, only so many insane schemes to take over the world you can invent.”
Why does he think the Alex Rider series achieved such success – what was its USP that made it shift so many copies? He is coy and surprisingly modest at this point, simply attributing his success to the fact that “no one was writing something like this for teenagers at the time.”
There is a very tangible sense of sadness that tinges his acceptance of Alex Rider’s inevitable end. He still categorises it above all his other works as his most profound success, fundamentally because “they seem to have introduced a whole generation of children to reading, which I think is a reasonable thing to have done with my life. I’m quite proud that probably one molecule of some of these children’s future success may be down to me.”
After you speak to Anthony Horowitz, there remains little doubt as to why he has achieved so much. He is articulate, dynamic and possesses an ability to engage and immerse you in what he is trying to convey; a good writer’s essential qualities. Yet Horowitz’s ‘X Factor’ is that he also has the confidence to back up his ability; he never shirks from a project and never doubts his talent. At a time where many York students worry about that scary buzz word ‘employability’, we can learn some simple truths from one of our most successful alumni; embrace your talent, take on every opportunity and experience and be willing to endure the long fight to achieve your ambitions.