Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz
Born	(1956-04-05) April 5, 1956 Stanmore, Middlesex, England
Occupation	author, screenwriter
Genre	Adventure, Mystery, Thriller
Website
http://www.anthonyhorowitz.com/

Anthony Horowitz (born 5 April 1956) is an English author and television scriptwriter. He writes mainly children's novels, such as the Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels for ITV series. He also continues to write Foyle's War for ITV.

Biography

Anthony Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, England into a Jewish family. He describes his father, a businessman, as a "fixer for Harold Wilson". He also admits his father was a very secretive man. Horowitz's father became in danger of becoming bankrupt, and after removing his wealth from Zürich banks, he hid it away under a false name. He then died, leaving his wife searching for but never finding the money. In 1963, at the age of eight, Horowitz was sent to a boarding school (Orley Farm in Harrow, London) where his unhappy childhood intensified. He recalls the headmaster of the school "flogging the boys until they bled". The memories have never left him. Horowitz attended the University of York.

Anthony now lives in North London with his wife Jill Green, whom he married in Hong Kong in 1988. Owing to their wedding ceremony being carried out in Chinese, Horowitz failed to understand any of it. Green produces Foyle's War, the series Horowitz writes for ITV. They have two sons together, Nicholas Mark (born 1989) and Cassian James (born 1991). He credits some of his writing to his family as he says they help him with research and such things. He also has a labrador dog called Lucky who has been run over three times.

Writing career

1978 – 1991

Horowitz had wanted to be a writer since he was eight, and he realized his dream in 1978 with the publication of his first book, Enter Frederick K Bower. This was followed just a year later by a sequel, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower. 1981 saw Horowitz's third novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet, published. In 1983 the first of the Pentagram series, The Devil's Door-bell was released. This story saw Martin Hopkins battling an ancient evil that threatened the whole world. Only three of four remaining stories in the series were ever written: The Night of the Scorpion (1984), The Silver Citadel (1986) and Day of the Dragon (1989).

In between writing these novels, Horowitz turned his attention to characters of legends, working with Richard Carpenter on Robin Sherwood: The Hooded Man (1986), and writing New Adventures of William Tell (1987).

In 1988, Groosham Grange was published. This book went on to win the 1999 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award. It was partially based on the years Horowitz spent at boarding school. It and its sequel star a thirteen year-old "witch" (based on the myth of the seventh child of a seventh child), David Eliot. Like Horowitz, Eliot's childhood is unhappy. This book is aimed at a slightly younger audience than Horowitz's previous books. .

This era in Horowitz's career also saw Adventurer (1987) and Starting Out (1990) published. However, the most major release of Horowitz's early career was The Falcon's Malteser (1986). This book was the first in the successful Diamond Brothers series, and was filmed unsuccessfully for television in 1989 as Just Ask For Diamond. It was followed in 1987 Public Enemy Number Two, and by South by South East in 1991. Horowitz also released a collection of rewritten Myths and Legends in 1991.

1994–2000

Horowitz wrote many stand-alone novels in the 1990s. 1994's Granny was Horowitz's first book in three years, and it was the first of three books for an audience similar to that of Groosham Grange. The second of these was The Switch, first published in 1996. The third was 1998's The Devil and His Boy, which is set in the Elizabethan era, and explores the rumour of Elizabeth I's secret son. In 1999, The Unholy Grail was published as a sequel to Groosham Grange.

Groosham Grange was renamed as Return to Groosham Grange in 2003, possibly to help readers understand the connections between the books. Horowitz Horror (1999) and More Horowitz Horror (2000) saw Horowitz exploring a darker side to his writing. Each book contains a number of short horror stories. Many of these stories were repackaged in twos or threes as the Pocket Horowitz series.

2000–

Horowitz began his most famous and successful series in the new millennium: the Alex Rider novels. These books are about a 14-year old boy becoming a spy. Currently, there are seven Alex Rider books: Stormbreaker (2000), Point Blanc (2001), Skeleton Key (2002), Eagle Strike (2003), Scorpia (2004) Ark Angel (2005) and Snakehead (2007). All the Alex Rider books have been released in April, one every year (Ark Angel was released on April 1 2005) However, no seventh book arrived in 2006, presumably due to Horowitz's commitments to the Power of Five series and the Stormbreaker movie, which was released in the U.S. in October 2006. The seventh Alex Rider novel, Snakehead, was released October 31 2007. Horowitz planned to travel to such places as Australia and Thailand in research for the novel in late 2006. Horowitz also has an idea for the eighth Alex Rider novel, but he says "Alex won't be in it".. At the Bath Festival of Children's Literature, he revealed the title of this book would most likely be Yassen, although he has confirmed to Red House Readers it will be "Yassen Teenage Assasin."

Horowitz also wrote three novels featuring the Diamond Brothers called The Blurred Man, The French Confection and I Know What You Did Last Wednesday in 2003, which were later republished together in Three of Diamonds (2004). The author information page in early editions of Scorpia and the introduction to Three of Diamonds claimed that Horowitz had travelled to Australia to research a new Diamond Brothers book, entitled Radius of the Lost Shark. However, this book has not been mentioned since, so it is doubtful it is still planned. Recently, a new Diamond Brothers "short" book entitled The Greek who Stole Christmas was announced.

Horowitz has recently branched out to an adult audience with 2004's The Killing Joke, a comedy about a man who tries to track a joke to its source with disastrous consequences. Horowitz's second adult novel, The Magpie Murders, was due out on October 18 2006. This date passed with no further news on the book; all that is known about it is that it will be about "a whodunit writer who is murdered while he's writing his latest whodunit" and "it has an ending which I hope will come as a very nasty surprise". As the initial release date was not met, it is not currently known if or when The Magpie Murders will be released.

In August 2005, Horowitz released a book called Raven's Gate which began another series entitled The Power of Five (The Gatekeepers in the United States). He describes it as "Alex Rider with witches and monsters". The second book in the series, Evil Star, was released in April 2006. The third in the series is called Nightrise, and was released on 2 April 2007.

The Power of Five is a rewritten, modern version of the Pentagram series from the 1980s. Although Pentagram required five books for story development, Horowitz only completed four: The Devil's Door-bell (Raven's Gate), The Night of the Scorpion (Evil Star), The Silver Citadel (Nightrise) and Day of the Dragon]]. Horowitz was clearly aiming for the same audience that read the Alex Rider novels with these rewrites, and The Power of Five has gained more public recognition than his earlier works, earning number 1 in the top 10 book chart.

Bibliography

Groosham Grange

• Groosham Grange (1988)
• The Unholy Grail (1999) (renamed Return to Groosham Grange in 2003)

Alex Rider

• Stormbreaker (2000)
• Point Blanc (2001)
• Skeleton Key (2002)
• Eagle Strike (2003)
• Scorpia (2004)
• Ark Angel (2005)
• Snakehead (2007)
• Yassen (forthcoming)
• "weeeeeeeeee" (forthcoming)" (3000)

Diamond Brothers

• The Falcon's Malteser (1986)
• Public Enemy Number Two (1987)
• South by South East (1991)
• The Blurred Man (2003)
• The French Confection (2003)
• I Know What You Did Last Wednesday (2003)
• The Greek Who Stole Christmas (2007)

Pentagram

• The Devil's Door-Bell (1983)
• The Night of the Scorpion (1984)
• The Silver Citadel (1986)
• Day of the Dragon (1989)

Power of Five (In US: The Gatekeepers)

• Raven's Gate (2005)
• Evil Star (2006)
• Nightrise (2007)
• City Of The Dead (2008 forthcoming)

Other novels

• Enter Frederick K Bower (1978)
• The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower (1979)
• Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet (1981)
• Robin of Sherwood: The Hooded Man (1986) (with Richard Carpenter)
• Adventurer (1987)
• New Adventures of William Tell (1987)
• Starting Out (1990)
• Granny (1994)
• The Switch (1996)
• The Devil And His Boy (1998)

Adult novels

• William S. (1999)
• Mindgame (2001) (adapted later as a play)
• The Killing Joke (2004)
• The Magpie Murders (2006)

Collections

• Myths and Legends (1991)
• Horowitz Horror (1999)
• More Horowitz Horror (2001)
• The Kingfisher Book of Myths and Legends (2003)

Television and film

Horowitz began writing for television in the 1980s, contributing to the children's anthology series Dramarama, and also writing for the popular fantasy series Robin of Sherwood. His association with murder mysteries began with the adaptation of several Hercule Poirot stories for ITV's popular Agatha Christie's Poirot series during the 1990s.

Often his work has a comic edge, such as with the comic murder anthology Murder Most Horrid (BBC Two, 1991) and the comedy-drama The Last Englishman (1995), starring Jim Broadbent. From 1997, he wrote the majority of the episodes in the early series of Midsomer Murders. In 2001, he created a drama anthology series of his own for the BBC, Murder in Mind, an occasional series which deals with a different set of characters and a different murder every one-hour episode.

He is also less-favourably known for the creation of two short-lived and sometimes derided science-fiction shows, Crime Traveller (1997) for BBC One and The Vanishing Man (pilot 1996, series 1998) for ITV. The successful launch of the Second World War-set detective series Foyle's War in 2002 helped to restore his reputation as one of Britain's foremost writers of popular drama.

Horowitz is the writer of a feature film screenplay, The Gathering, which was released in 2002 and starred Christina Ricci. He wrote the screenplay for Alex Rider's first major motion picture, Stormbreaker and is working on the screenplay for the second: Point Blanc.

External links

• Official website

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