Anthony Horowitz- Favourite Things
Each week Reaction Weekend brings you Favourite Things – interviews with interesting people about the skills, hobbies, pleasures and past times that make them who they are.
Anthony Horowitz is one of Britain’s most lauded writers. He has written over 40 books including Foyle’s War and teen spy series Alex Rider, which sold approximately 19 million copies worldwide. His new book, ‘Moonflower Murders’ is available now.
These are a few of Anthony Horowitz’s favourite things.
Walking in Suffolk
It is the place where I am happiest in the world. I walk in Orford Ness along the river Alde, I walk around Butley Creek, I walk in Rendlesham forest and I walk across south Alde and Dulwich, down the entire south coast. My son has a dog, a Labrador Staffie cross from Battersea Dogs Home. He is also one of my favourite things; every writer should have a dog. This morning I have done a two-hour walk, I will do another two hours later. Some days I do four or five. The forests in Suffolk are unbelievably lovely. You have so many different shades of green, different types of trees, changing vistas and the almost certainty that you will get lost.
Magic
I am a big fan of magic; I love watching it. I do collect magic tricks and I can do a few slights, but I have always made it a practice not to perform, or even try to perform because there is something a little bit sad about a man of my age doing card tricks. That being said, there are amazing magicians, Shinn Lim is probably my favourite. I love watching magic, I love anything that is not what it seems. When I was a boy, I liked to have magic tricks and I always liked illusions. I just love things that confuse you, you could say that is related to my work. One of my books, Moriarty, is based on a card trick; the whole plot of the book was drawn from a very simple card trick.
Learning Greek
I have been learning Greek for about 5 years now. I have got to the stage I can easily ask for, say, the way to the post office but have no chance of understanding the reply. Greeks speak extremely quickly, and they tend to cut their words in half and have very different dialects. I spend a lot of time in Crete and they have a dialect which you might compare to a sort of thick Cornish accent in English. It is quite difficult to keep up. But, the sheer challenge of learning a language, particularly a language which is almost completely useless gives me great pleasure. It is not like French or Spanish where you can use it around the world, you can only use it in Greece and only sporadically as everybody speaks English anyway. That said, because I love the country and love going there, I thought it was polite almost to try and learn the language. And because it was so impossibly difficult, I attacked it in the way of an intellectual exercise. I have a teacher three times a week when I am in Crete and I use various websites and read books, I even gave a talk in Athens last year in Greek.
Cryptic crosswords
I love good cryptic clues; I have to ration myself because it is too much of a waste of time to do too often. I think in life generally the things that I like most are those that are effectively useless, you spend thirty minutes doing a crossword and really you have wasted half an hour, but the pleasure in doing it is enormous. There’s a theme here, it is not too far from magic tricks; I like things and words that deceive you. Good clues give me enormous pleasure. I used to do crosswords with my father, we were not very close but one of the things I do remember is when I was 15 or 16 I would sometimes travel into London with him on the tube, he would be doing a crossword and would show me how the clues worked. I am very proud that my son is very good at cryptic crosswords too, it has passed down the family.
Cooking
During lockdown I have discovered the joys of cooking. Just before lockdown it was my birthday and my sister gave me two cookbooks by Rick Stein; I discovered the pleasures of cooking for my family and my wife. One of the things about coronavirus is meals have taken on a new significance. Meals before this were snatched occurrences, transition points. Now they have become events. The whole process; from the shopping to cooking, serving, eating, and even washing up- I find it all so enjoyable.