Anthony Horowitz

I’ve spent much of the autumn and winter shooting my new TV series for BBC1. New Blood looks at the so-called ‘Y’ generation and focuses on two 25-year-olds who fight crime but who spend as much time worrying about their university loans, finding somewhere to live, arguing with each other and trying to kick-start their careers. It’s been fun watching our two young stars — Mark Strepan and Ben Tavassoli, watch those names — grow into the parts and I’ve thrown everything at them. They’ve cycled and run miles, been shot at, drugged, kidnapped, drenched, tortured and blown up. They’ve jumped off the roof of a hotel, escaped from a burning car and fought naked in a Turkish hammam. To their credit, they’ve never once complained . . .

It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy. As my family knows, I’m hopeless at keeping secrets and I’ve found it almost impossible hanging on to this one for the past few months. Even now I’m forbidden to reveal the title, the story, the date it takes place or any of the characters… and I’ll probably get into trouble even for writing this. Believe me, Orion Books and their legal department are more sinister than Smersh. In fact I did quite well and only dropped one clue to someone who follows me on Twitter. He asked me what my big secret was and I told him the answer was oobvious. As I hoped, he thought it was a typing error.

I have written a play, but a month after it was sent to half a dozen theatres, I have heard nothing. Either they’re being slow or they’re so shocked that they cannot bring themselves to respond. The play is called Dinner With Saddam and takes place in Baghdad on the evening of the Allied bombardment. It’s a comedy. Is it even possible, I wonder, for an English writer to portray an Arab family in a humorous way without laying himself open to charges of racism? And when all things are considered, was it good or bad timing to send the play out just one day before the Isis forces launched their first bloody attack? But I cannot see any way to write about the horror of Iraq except through comedy.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3" title="Toby Young and Fraser Nelson discuss Michael Gove's personality and the attacks from all sides"] Listen [/audioplayer]A few weeks ago, I was a guest at a huge tea party for children’s authors, publishers and commentators at the South Bank, but the atmosphere, over the cupcakes and finger sandwiches, was decidedly frosty. There were three keynote speakers and their speeches all targeted a man so vile and destructive that the audience visibly recoiled every time his name was mentioned. He was, of course, Michael Gove — and I wasn’t sure I should tell anyone that I had always rather admired him and, moreover, was about to interview him for this magazine.

‘How do we get children reading?’ the minister asked me, just a week after Michael Gove had got them reciting poetry, more or less by making it illegal for them not to. This was his number two, Nick Gibb, who had invited me to the Ministry of Education for a 40-minute chat. I’m not sure how impressed he was with my thoughts as I’ve heard nothing since, so it seems fair enough to share them with Spectator readers. Who knows? Maybe Mr Gibb is one of them. Politicians have a way of paying lip service to the subject of illiteracy because it is one of those issues that couldn’t be simpler. We want children to read because it’s good for them… right?

A Christmas short story by Anthony Horowitz Illustrated by Carolyn Gowdy They were spending their first Christmas together in Antigua, Simon and Jane Maxwell, enjoying not just a holiday but a honeymoon after a courtship that had taken them both by surprise. It was his second marriage, her first — and perhaps it was because she had waited so long that she had jumped into it so readily. Of course, she was a modern woman with a perfectly successful career… in publishing, as it happened. She might be single but she would never have described herself as ‘on the shelf’. It wasn’t as if she kept cats or anything dreadful like that.