Anthony Horowitz

Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth / Plain Jaine Media

Society & Culture, Unknown

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A best-selling novellist with a life story that reads like a best-selling novel... our guest this week is Anthony Horowitz. In this absorbing and - at times - moving and shocking conversation, Anthony tells Gyles about his young life and upbringing, which is extraordinary. Born to wealthy parents into a very large home of extreme privilege, Horowitz's childhood was cold, lonely and lacking in love and affection. His father was critical and prone to cruelty, his mother was stifled. The teachers at his prep school were brutal and abusive. So it's not surprising that Anthony looks back at this childhood with ambivalence, anger and regret, and that it's found its way into many of his books.

Anthony also tells Gyles about how he found his voice as a writer, about meeting his wife, Jill Green, and their brilliant partnership, and about his hatred of writers' routines.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The future is unpredictable at times, that the open university are the experts in distance learning, allowing you to fit study around your life.
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0:25.2	The Open University. The future is open.
0:32.1	This is Rosebud. My producer Harriet Jane said, for goodness sake, can we have a succinct introduction, please?
0:39.3	You can, Harriet. Cue the music. Our rosebud guest today is Anthony Horowitz, novelist, screenwriter, Master of Mystery
1:08.5	and Suspense, famous for, well, the multi-million selling Alex Rider series,
1:14.7	books for young people, murder mysteries galore, the magpie murders, moonflower murders,
1:19.7	marble hall murders, the Daniel Hawthorne series, hugely popular as well, screenwriter, writing
1:25.9	episodes of Poirot, Midsummer Murders,
1:28.1	and creating and writing one of my all-time favorite television series, Foyles War.
1:34.3	His own story is, well, it reads like a novel. You don't need me rabbiting on about it,
1:41.4	because here is the man himself. Please welcome to this episode of Rosebud with Anthony Horowitz.
1:47.7	Cue the music.
2:07.9	Before we start, Anthony, I noticed that you were waiting for us in the foyer of the Gremlin House Hotel. And this is a habit you make of being on time? Yes, I don't quite know where it came from,
2:13.3	but I do hate being late. I think one of the great inventions of our time, as well as being one of the most destructive, is the mobile phone, simply because if you are delayed without any possibility of getting there on time, at least you can let other people know that the bus is broken down, or the train hasn't arrived or whatever. But ever since I've been a boy, going to interviews or whatever for jobs or or even for university interviews before that,
2:35.4	I would always make sure I was there 20 minutes earlier with a book, which I can then read outside
2:39.5	and make sure that I really can just walk in on the dot to arrive when you're meant to be there.
2:44.3	Well, you're meant to be here.
2:45.9	And I'm meant to begin like this by saying, Anthony Horowitz, am I pronouncing it correctly? You are. Born on the 5th of April
2:54.1	1955? Yes. What is your very first memory? I want this to be a cheerful conversation. And if you go back
	...

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