The Bond inspiration

Anthony Horowitz talks to Luaine Lee about James Bond, boarding school, travelling the world and his massively popular Alex Rider series.

AN idea percolated in writer Anthony Horowitz's brain for 10 years before anything came of it. But what came of it changed his life. Horowitz is the author of such works as Foyle's War, The Power

of Five, The House of Silk and the uberpopular Alex Rider series, starring Otto Farrant (pictured at right). ‘‘Growing up, books by Ian Fleming and the Bond films were a huge source of happiness for me,’’ the British writer recalls.

‘‘I can remember waiting and waiting for December when the movie would be released. I'd be the first in the queue standing in the rain to see the latest James Bond movie . . . Everything that was missing from my life was in the Bond movies.’’

Roger Moore served as his bonded Bond.

‘‘He was a great Bond, but he hung around for a very long time, and he was 57 when he played James Bond for the last time. I saw that movie, and I still remember sitting in the movie theatre and thinking to myself, ‘Why can't Bond be a teenager?' And that was the light bulb moment that changed my life.’’

The glow of that light radiated Horowitz's Alex

Rider franchise, which has been turned into an eightpart TV series streaming on TVNZ

OnDemand.

‘‘I didn't write that until 2000, but that was the inspiration for it,’’ he recalls. ‘‘Of course, I have to say, as soon as I began to create Alex Rider my first instinct and my first job was to make sure that he was nothing like Bond, to make him completely different.’’

Writing has proved an obsession for Horowitz (65) that began when he was 10.

‘‘I was a very unhappy child,’’ he confesses. ‘‘I had very wealthy parents and I was very privileged. I wish I could be thankful for that, but nonetheless they sent me to a private school when I was 8 years old, and I was extremely unhappy there because if you were in an English boarding school back in the 1960s, you had to be one of two things: very clever or very athletic. And I was neither. I was an oversized child. I wasn't very bright. I wasn't doing well in class. And I didn't have many friends.’’

Two events changed things for him.

‘‘The first was my discovery of the library. The school had a library, and that was my place of refuge and books became an escape for me — just reading adventure stories and absorbing them and living them. And at the same time, I discovered the ability to tell stories. So in the dormitory at night I would tell stories to the other kids. And suddenly I was popular because they enjoyed my stories. That was a transformative moment in my life. I was 10 years old. And I knew I was going to be writer. And there was no Plan B.’’

At first Plan A didn't go so well.

‘‘I worked as a waiter at a cafe. I've been a postman, worked in advertising, I worked in an abattoir. I spent six months as a cowboy running cattle in Australia when I was 18. I've worked in shops, hotels, I've done plenty of jobs. I mean,

I was in advertising for most of my proper

‘career'. The others were student jobs. But I've had to support myself until my books took off and I was able to support myself by writing.’’

He lived in Paris for a year while still a teenager and travelled to India when he was 18.

‘‘I arrived at the Calcutta station in India and I threw an ice cream that I'd bought into the dustbin. I'd bought an ice cream, I was really hungry and took one bite and I threw it into the bin.

‘‘I think 10, 11, 12 children crowded in on that bin and began to punch each other out to try and get the ice cream. It was my first understanding of poverty, of child poverty, also my first understanding of the casual way we in the West will throw away food without thinking to ourselves that it has consequences.’’

Horowitz, who still writes his first draft with pen and paper, advises wouldbe writers not to fear failure.

‘‘I think all writers are fearful. I think it's the fear of being found out,’’ he says.

‘‘Every writer I know has said this: You worry that people are going to wake up to the fact that you're not that good. I'll write a book, and as I'm writing it I'm convinced it's the greatest book anybody has ever written — the greatest murder mystery, the greatest kids' book, the greatest thriller — whatever it is. Then I'm finished and the manuscript's on my desk and I think, ‘Oh, my God, this is a terrible book and everybody's going to know it. And my career's over.' ’’

Horowitz has been married for 32 years to Jill Green, a producer on his TV projects. They have two sons.

While he's written more than 40 books, Horowitz's thirst remains unquenched.

``I can't complain about my sales and my profile, but I think I'm an arsonist,'' he says.

``I think that the writer and the arsonist have a lot in common. If you ask an arsonist what his dream is, in the beginning it's to light a match. Then it's to set fire to a newspaper. Then it's to set fire to a house. But an arsonist is only really happy when he or she has set fire to the whole world and every city is burning and, like Nero, they can watch the flames and play on their fiddles. I'm an arsonist. I want to set fire on the world.'' — TNS

Alex Rider is available to stream on TVNZ OnDemand.