Interview between Anthony Horowitz and Alex. Kane in the Merchant Hotel, Belfast on November 2nd, 2011.

©Copyright: Alex. Kane

AK: “In the introduction to one of your books you mention that you were sent to the grimmest, most gruesome boarding school in England. How did that experience shape you as a writer and as a person?”

AH: “Eight to thirteen, being in a very hostile, brutal, destructive environment, where I was being told almost every day of my life that I was completely worthless and would amount to nothing led me in two directions: the first one was that I started telling stories at night, in the dormitories, to the other boys, which were stories of escape. And in those stories I found myself. I was able to escape from school. I also spent a lot of time in the library and I began to discover the pleasure of stories also as an escape. The Tintin stories were an enormous source of pleasure. Stories for me were a lifeline and the ability to tell stories I quickly discovered was the only talent I had.”

AK: You are probably best known as a children’s author. Did that desire to write stories for children reflect your own unhappiness at school and your wish to give other children in similar circumstances their own escape route?

AH: Not really. I wrote children’s books at a time when it was unfashionable to write them; when children’s bookshops barely existed and when major bookstores didn’t have dedicated sections for children. The impulse to write children’s books obviously connects to the rather unsatisfactory childhood I had had, to my lost childhood in fact: To an extent I was was trying to rediscover something in myself, something that hadn’t really happened. Basically, I hadn’t grown up. But to this day I’m not really sure what made me sit down and write my first children’s book. It was wet, raining and I was bored and I started to write a story just like that.

AK: You were clearly very unhappy at school. Were you an only child?

AH: No, I had an older brother and a younger sister, but we weren’t very close as a family. I had this very peculiar upbringing within this very privileged wealthy environment, one in which I was almost free of emotion, where nobody really expressed themselves. My father also had a very low opinion of me largely and ridiculed me when I announced I was going to be a writer. Something I think I had decided to be as early as eight.

AK: Were your parents aware of your unhappiness at boarding school? Were they aware that you were being beaten?

AK: Yes. And it’s a question I often ask myself. Why do intelligent well-meaning people put their children through such misery and torment and looking back on it I can only think that they were in some way naive and that they thought that because they were paying such a large amount of money for the education it must be good for me and that

suffering was good for me. All I can say is that if my children had reacted to their schooling in the way that I did, the sort of the tears and the screaming and the fear of going back to this place and some of the brutality that went on within it I would have taken my children out of their school in a second. And to this day—-and my parents died young and I can’t put this question to them—why did they send me there, why did they keep me there?

AK: You once said that the heroes of your books never have parents, because you can’t enjoy yourself and have enjoyment if your parents are around. Does that flow from the relationship with your own parents?

AK: It’s slightly different. What interests me about writing a kid’s book is about empowering a child: taking everything away that is in support of the child. You take Alex Rider, for example, and you get rid of his parents and you throw him into an adult world where he has to live on his own wits and where he has to somehow make sense of the betrayals and the untrustworthiness around him and then the boy becomes the man. That’s what interests me.

AK: Yet the pattern I see in your heroes surely reflects the same sense of betrayal and untrustworthiness in your early life: that sense that the support structures had been removed and that you had to look after yourself. Tintin, for instance, a character you still adore, makes his own way in the world and yet has no family that we know of?

AH: Yes, that’s absolutely true and Tintin had no parents and no family. But what’s great about Tintin was that I was able to live through him.

AK: And you’re now working on an outline for the second Tintin film?

AH: Yes, if the second one happens there is every chance that I will be writing it.

AK: In terms of Folye, Midsomer Murders, the Poirot adaptations, the Diamond Brothers, Alex Rider, Tintin and now Sherlock Holmes, there is this common theme of mystery and detection in your work. Where did that come from?

AH: Sherlock Holmes had a part in that. I loved those stories when I was sixteen and seventeen. I loved murder mystery at that age. I’ve always liked puzzles. I’ve always been drawn to what we don’t know and to where we’re not allowed to go. I always like to think that people hide more of themselves than they reveal. Detective stories therefore always had an enormous appeal for me. They suit my temperament. They are a simple way of searching for the truth.

AK: That line about hiding more of themselves than they reveal: you mentioned earlier about your parents, never really knowing them, never being able to ask them about certain questions.

AH: I grew up surrounded by mystery, that’s true. When I was twenty or twenty-one I remember my father giving me £250,000 worth of bearer bonds and I had to deliver

them to an office somewhere and pretend to be a security company and I was never allowed to ask what was that all about what was going on. And of course there was the mystery of his own money which completely vanished when he died and my mother was more or less destitute and again, what happened to that money, where did it go, who took it, is it still there? I did grow up surrounded by mystery.

AK: You have two boys of your own now, in their twenties, how do you get on with them?

AH: We do have a lot of fun together. It’s a very different relationship. I like the fact that my son calls me Anthony rather than Dad. Both of them are my best critics they keep me very well in line on what I should and shouldn’t write. I guess it was a determination of mine that I would be that sort of father.

AK: You have said that you are only ever truly happy when you are writing. What’s your routine? How do you write?

AH: I have no routine. I don’t have certain hours or a word count. By and large, though, if I don’t write I don’t sleep. I write every single day. I do love writing. It consumes me completely. I love every aspect of it. I love the feel of a pen and paper. I love the sound that the pen makes when I’m writing. I love the pages getting thicker. I love thinking up descriptions. I write anywhere and everywhere.

AK: And you’ve also said that it’s important to write for children. It’s about the next generation. They need something, some sort of inspiration. Do you think you have given them that inspiration?

AH: I’m enormously proud of the writing I do for children, although I don’t consider myself a children’s author. I don’t like the words because I always think its slightly weird and odd and many children’s authors were and are weird and odd. I was asked what I was most proud of in my writing and my answer to that was Alex Rider because I think that promoting reading or sharing one’s enthusiasm for reading is so important. I cannot conceive of my life without books and I’m horrified by the thought that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will never actually read a book in their lifetime. How can you possibly live if you haven’t tasted even the sort of the foothills of literature? You don’t need to worry about reading Dickens or Dostoevsky, just reading a good book does so much for you, so enriches you; it’s the colour in a black and white world.

AK: What books and writers linger in your mind from when you were stuck in that boarding school?

AH: I read all the Willard Price books. He was a Canadian naturalist who wrote all those adventure books like Cannibal Adventure or Elephant Adventure and I still remember waiting for those to come out, hoping that I would be the first person on the list to read it. That little boy waiting in that grim room in that school, waiting for the next book to come is, as it were, the story of my life. When I write a book today, whether it’s House of Silk or an Alex Rider book, I guess I’m writing for that boy. Here

it is, it’s coming, and you’ll have it soon. I’ve never said that before to anyone, but that is how it is.

AK: And what do you read now? How do you escape from your own writing? Or do you want to escape from it?

AH: A lot of my reading is to do with my writing. I’ve just been re-reading all the Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories and two biographies of him. I read widely, both high and low fiction. I still love nineteenth century literature most and re-read it endlessly. I could spend the whole of my life just reading Dickens over and over again.

AK: And you love films?

AH: I like them less than I used to. When I was young they were my absolute lifeblood. I’d be waiting for the next Hitchcock or Fellini or Truffaut. These days I think films have lost their identity. The Third Man is a perfect film and there are not many films that are perfect. There’s not a single frame in it that isn’t perfect. It has a wonderful story with a superb mystery element. It’s very clever and with one of the greatest soundtracks ever. The greatness in books and films is that they create a world in which you can immerse yourself. Just as in Doyle’s work you get this perfectly presented Victorian London and you immerse yourself in that too. Even key words like ‘elementary’ or ‘the game’s afoot’ take you straight to the heart of that other world.

AK: What about Sherlock Holmes films or television. Have you got a favourite?

AH: Jeremy Brett is my favourite Sherlock. I loved those adaptations and thought he was superb. Basil Rathbone was pretty good, too. And I think Benedict Cumberbatch is doing a very good job. It’s easier to think about Sherlock Holmes’s that have failed: like Peter Cook in Hound of the Baskervilles or Michael Caine in Without a Clue.

AK: You first read Sherlock Holmes when you were sixteen. Do you remember the story and why did it stay with you?

AH: For most people it’s very hard to get Holmes out of your system when you’ve read him, because there is something so quintessential that appeals to be boy—and I think it is probably more a male thing than a woman, I don’t know. For me it was the Sign of Four. It was murder. It was India. I love the way that you take a suburb of London and yet the tendrils of India can creep out. It was the characters. It was the bloodhound and the river Thames: and the wonderful action scenes, with the chase down the river at the end. Doyle was a terrific action writer. He was actually a very fine writer throughout and I do like a lot of his other stuff, including the Lost World and Professor Challenger.

AK: Did the Conan Doyle Estate approach you with the idea of writing an ‘official’ new Sherlock Holmes adventure?

AH: I wrote a book for Orion a few years ago, a peculiar comic novel called The Killing Joke—as part of a two book deal—but after the mauling I got from the critics I din’t

feel inclined to write another adult book. My agent very kindly told me that we’d wait until the moment was right and then the Sherlock Holmes novel came and we took it to Orion and so that was why there was a wait.

AK: But did the Conan Doyle Estate or one of their representatives come to you or did you put out feelers and say you were interested?

AH: I don’t really know very much about the Conan Doyle Estate. I heard about it through my agent and it was just a question of the descendants having decided to get together and create a seal of approval and bestowed it upon me to write a book. But having heard that, my first instinct was that I didn’t want to meet them, didn’t want to know them, didn’t want to take notes from them, didn’t want to tell them what I was writing. I’m not going to show it to them; they’ll just have to wait until it’s published. I wanted to be all on my own. I’m not having a deal which involves them. To which they all said yes.

AK: So they endorsed unseen?

AH: Yes, which was great and brave of them, because it could have been horrible.

AK: They didn’t make any effort at all to make sure that you were being true to Doyle and Holmes?

AH: I think they knew me well enough. I mean, when Sebastian Faulks wrote the ‘new’ Bond novels I don’t think anyone gave him notes or instructions. He wrote what he wanted to write.

AK: How then did you prepare for the task?

AH: I first of all read all the Holmes stories again, which was a great pleasure. The plot had come almost immediately. It came about because certain things seemed obvious to me. The first was there had to be a reason why this book had never been heard of, so therefore the core of it was going to be dark and unpleasant and something Watson didn’t want to write about. The length dictated some of the plot. The Doyle originals are only about 40,000 words, but Orion wanted at least 90,000. So I knew immediately that I would have to connect two stories together, for that was the only way to do this properly, for the Sherlock Holmes template doesn’t allow for such a lengthy book unless you add something else in.

I made other rules to myself. There would be no guest appearances, like Queen Victoria, because Doyle never did it. Somebody told me today that there are stories in which Holmes meets Dracula, Tarzan and even Hitler! When I set out on this people like you—the Holmes purists—were whom I had in mind. People like you, who like Sherlock Holmes, but who by and large are not ‘fans’—which is the wrong word; authorities is more what they are. I was determined that this book would not have a single sentence that you would read and would choke on your coffee or get angry.

I have to be careful how I say this. There were passages in the Sebastian Faulks Bond book which did just that. They made me absolutely furious that someone I really revere, Ian Fleming, was being traduced to an extent that Bond would say this or that. I’m not saying the book wasn’t well written and wasn’t an enjoyable read, but to me as a Bond purist it broke rules.

So my first note to myself when I took this on is that I would break no rules. So that’s why there is no woman in the story: there was only Irene Adler, we know that because it was written down. There is a disguise in it. We do have the Boston sequence, because that’s what Doyle did. There would be certain words and phrases that Holmes purists would pick up on.

AK: All the characters you have created have their own voices. And the Poirot and Tintin adaptations have their own template. How difficult was it for you to write as John Watson?

AH: It wasn’t that difficult…..

AH: It is, Anthony, because most people get it wrong and you end up with pastiche.

AH: That’s because they are arrogant. I remember once seeing an adaptation of a Dickens novel where the writer had taken it upon herself to introduce new characters and to have jokes. I was raging, because Dickens is such a great writer. My only job with Doyle was to live within his world. I started with Watson and Holmes, that extraordinary narrative voice, Mrs. Hudson. And I had Lestrade, Moriarty, Mycroft, the Diogenes Club and Baker Street. All I had to do was join the dots in a different way and to remember with every page and word I wrote that Doyle is a better writer than me. Therefore, don’t try and improve upon him. Come up with a different plot, but don’t try and reanalyse that friendship between Holmes and Watson. Don’t go post-struturalist or modernist on it. Accept what it is.

AK: But what you’ve done is exactly what you should have done. Most authors who enter the Holmes world don’t even come close.

AH: But that’s because they are not written by professional writers in most cases. They are written by ‘enthusiasts.’ I’m sure they enjoy doing it and I have nothing against it. But I am a professional writer. I have been a paid writer for thirty-five years. If I am not good at it yet I never will be.

AK: Do you play ‘The game’? Do you consider the issue of Watson’s wound or which university Holmes attended?

AH: No. I have read some of this business about how Watson got his wound and how it seems to be in two places and so on. But we all know that Doyle didn’t really care about this detail. He didn’t expect his stories to be the subject of such detailed, forensic analysis. He made loads of mistakes throughout the stories; it’s part of their charm. Snakes don’t climb ropes, so his most famous story doesn’t work. But do we care? Of course we don’t. As Doyle said, ‘what does it matter, as long as you keep hold of the

reader’s attention’? He forgot things. He used the same passage in two stories. He also used the same clues quite frequently. But it doesn’t matter, because his genius was greater than all that.

AK: You opened the book with an example of Holmes’ ability to put in words what Watson was thinking.

AH: When I was given this job to do I knew that was one of the things I had to do and get right. It’s pure Holmes, his thing, if you like. But I love that process would he is able to infer so much from a few pieces of simple evidence.

AK: It seems to me, speaking as a purist, that Moriarty comes out of this as less reptilian and malevolent than we expect him to be, whereas Mycroft comes across as less honourable and moral. Was that accidental?

AH: One of the pleasures of writing the book was taking all of the lesser characters and, because Watson is writing this much later as an older man, re-evaluating them. He concludes, for instance, that he has portrayed Lestrade in too harsh a light over the years. My first thought about Moriarty was whether I should make him the villain of the whole piece. It was tempting, but a little obvious. I love the fact, which you have noted, that his role is slightly more benevolent. Holmes and Doyle had plenty of time for him and even speak very kindly about him in The Final Problem.

You mention Mycroft, but that’s just another instance of Doyle getting the details wrong. In the Greek Interpreter he has one job, whereas in Bruce-Partington he’s suddenly something completely different.

AK: You chose, as well, not to have a Holmes self-injecting drug scene?

AH: He only ever takes drugs in the Sign of Four. His drug use only comes, and Doyle is quite specific about this, when he’s bored and he’s never bored in this book so it would be quite wrong for him to be on drugs.

AK: The radio editor of the Radio Times, writing about the Book at Bedtime reading of House of Silk, noted that while Doyle wouldn’t be spinning in his grave at the quality of the writing he might have concerns about the nature of the crime committed. I know you have set the context for the crime, but do you think there will be a temptation for Holmes purists to say that, with sex abuse and cover-up, you have dragged Holmes into a very unpleasant ‘modern’ world?

AH: To those people who would say that, I would say that after you have finished the book look up Cleveland Street 1891; one year later the same story happened. So it’s very much of the time. What I like about the book is that the nature of the House of Silk isn’t actually the final reveal of the book; it’s just the one before the final reveal. This book has two huge surprises, but it’s the second one which is the heart of the matter. The solution comes in the final chapter and the House of Silk is just solved along the way. I don’t think that people should be, either in a historical or literary way, bothered

by it. I was very careful to make sure that the description of the crime is very carefully and lightly and barely touched upon. I didn’t want it to become sensationalised. I also think that the severity of the crime brings out things in Holmes that we haven’t seen in the Doyle books, without changing the nature of Holmes.

AK: Are you going to write another Holmes novel?

AH: No and there are very good reasons for not. In all honesty I don’t think I can do it better than this one. I have also cherry-picked my favourite characters and phrases so I haven’t left myself much for a second outing. Also, the second one would get compared with the first and inevitably they would say it’s not as good—so why write it?

I took this task on with certain misgivings. I’m not certain that I like all these parodies, pastiches, sequels and prequels. There are so many publishers trying to make a fast buck out of old characters. Everybody’s at it. I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been Holmes. For me the invitation was too alluring to miss: to go and live in |Baker Street for a few months—which lover of Holmes would say no to that task? But having done it I wouldn’t do it again.

That said there is another book on the way. Its set in that period and Holmes will make a very fleeting appearance in it. But it is not a Holmes novel.

AK: Would you be tempted, maybe every three or four years, to write a short story?

AH: Well, since you ask, and I haven’t said this to anybody else—and I haven’t even said it to anyone in Orion or my agent—I suppose it is possible that somewhere down the line I could do a book of all the short stories that Watson mentions but never wrote. The Giant Rat of Sumatra and all the other ones. I think they have been done—lots of people have done them. The trouble is that if I do it, it will be compared unfavourably to the House of Silk. And I think they would also turn in to more of an intellectual exercise of puzzle solving rather than a story built around Holmes and Watson. But I might in years to come.