Kids need protecting from social media – ministers are sitting around | Books | Entertainment

Arriving an hour late to interview Anthony Horowitz and rather expecting (and deserving) a rocket for my tardiness, I’m delighted to find him poised over an A4 writing pad having spent the time completing a chapter outline and three pages of his next novel. “I can work anywhere in the world with this,” he gestures to his smart fountain pen containing, he tells me with a mischievous smile, a blend of ink known as ‘Writer’s Blood’.

It couldn’t be more fitting for the consummate Horowitz who, should he cut himself shaving, would surely bleed ink. First drafts are always written in long-hand before he transfers them onto a laptop, he tells me.

“Sitting with this wonderful tool and paper, and to have ink on my fingers, makes me happy,” he continues, waving his pen.

I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet – not bad given the master writer must have killed literally hundreds of people over the years (thankfully all fictionally… as far as we know). Having just turned 70, fans will be delighted to hear the ideas “just keep pouring in”.

Indeed, over 47 years and more than 60 books he’s moved with swanlike grace between genres, platforms and projects; one minute tuning in a TV script (like last year’s brilliantly-titled Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue); the next an Alex Rider adventure for younger readers; a brace of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes reboots; or one of his two current adult murder-mystery strands – Susan Ryeland and Hawthorne and Horowitz.

The latter, which we’re here to talk about today, feature private investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his hapless sidekick – a fictional alter-ego of Anthony himself – and the sixth book, A Deadly Episode, was published on Thursday (April 23). The series has been getting increasingly humorous, its creator growing in confidence in the metafiction elements of the story within a story, and the latest book sees a feature film being made of the first book in the series, The Word is Murder.

“The production company is fairly hopeless, the director is pretentious, they’ve run out of money and they’re way over budget,” chuckles Anthony. “The screenwriter, who is not me, doesn’t like detective stories and wants to impose an eco-message on the material. The two stars hate each other, and then there’s a murder on set.”

Fortunately, Hawthorne and Horowitz are perfectly placed to investigate. It’s typically brilliant, sending up both publishing and filmmaking as well as Anthony himself. “If you put me into a real life police investigation, I don’t think I’d be good at it,” he smiles. “I don’t normally guess the endings in other people’s books or in TV shows. I can be easily fooled. I’m good at inventing crime – just not solving it.”

But will anyone else spot themselves, I wonder? After all, Anthony’s wife Jill Green, with whom he lives in southwest London, is a celebrated TV producer.

“No,” he insists. “I’ve never once used any of my books to score points. There are elements of people I’ve met in my TV and film career but no one will recognise themselves.”

However, the next book – the as-yet-untitled seventh which currently exists only in the pages of the writing pad in front of us – will feature a whole chapter dedicated to his wife – thus far a largely unseen presence in the series. “I’m laughing to myself thinking about it,” he admits, perhaps a tad bravely. It’s all great fun, but it would be a mistake to view it as cosy crime.

“My books are about something beyond murder, they’re about the nature of crime and the nature of crime fiction and why murder is entertainment,” he insists. “But murder is still murder – even if it takes place in a beautiful English village – so I’ve always reacted against the ‘cosy’ description. When I begin a book, it’s always a case that somebody must be pretty upset, angry or frightened to want to kill.”

With the latest TV adaptation of his Susan Ryeland novels due in the autumn, starring Lesley Manville, it’s easy to suppose it’s business as usual for the creator of Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. In fact, Anthony admits British TV production is struggling despite, generally, it being a golden age for the genre.

“You’ve got Netflix, Amazon and Disney and they’re pouring all their resources into shows that are changing the landscape of television,” he explains. “So those old-fashioned detective shows like Midsomer Murders now feel a little bit antiquated. And if you’re in line to make TV, you’re standing behind some very powerful figures – all the major directors, all the major Hollywood stars have moved from films to television.”

He’s certainly not complaining – and singles out current favorites Pluribus and The Pitt as “stellar” TV – but admits: “Instead of being what I was, a big fish in a small pool, I’m now a relatively small fish in a gigantic pool. I remain optimistic, but things will change because young people are getting their pleasures elsewhere.”

What Anthony, who always leaves the solution to his books in an envelope while writing in case he gets “hit by a bus” before he finishes the book, is fuming at is the government’s failure to protect young people from smartphones – ministers have pushed back yet again against cross-party Lords proposals to ban under-16s from social media.

“It’s almost incomprehensible when the evidence is piled high that they are causing grief and anxiety in young people and damaging reading and communication skills and their ability to socialise,” he sighs. “Of course, social media is here to stay but we need to protect children from algorithms designed to lead to dependency.”

Ministers, he says, seem happy to sit around and “wait for the worst”.

On a brighter note, he’s looking forward to appearing as a star guest at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July. “It’s the premier crime festival in the country and it’s also a beautiful town,” he adds. “And by coincidence, one of the characters in my next book lives in Harrogate, so I can do some research while I’m there.”

That’s Anthony Horowitz for you… always writing!

• A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz (Century, £22) is out now. For more informaton on the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, visit HIF or call 01423 562 303