journalism

In his monthly column, Anthony Horowitz ponders the value of chipping in on debates.

I found myself in the news twice in one week and both times I wondered what I was doing there. First off, I was on the BBC arguing against the segregation of children’s books by gender – pink for girls and blue for boys and so on. Then it was The Independent, ringing me up about new rules that make it impossible to send books to prisoners, a nasty piece of small-mindedness from the office of Chris Grayling.

There’s a pattern here. Someone, somewhere, suggests something really stupid and then journalists ring round for someone like me to refute it. But every time I crawl into a taxi at 6.30am for my three minutes on television, I wonder why I’m doing it. Gender-driven books will ultimately fail because nobody will buy them, and although Grayling has now written to the Poet Laureate, he’s clearly in no mood to change his mind. Why do I bother?

And why, for that matter, am I writing this column? Well, one reason is revenge. I’ve recently started going to opera again and have already written about an irritating production of The Magic Flute that I saw at the ENO. Well, I went to their Rigoletto and it was even worse. How can you take a story that takes place in a street, a palace and outside an assassin’s home and shove it all into a Victorian gentleman’s club? What is Rigoletto’s daughter doing in the club (occasionally balancing on a rolled up carpet), when she’s meant to be sequestered at home? Why are the members prancing about, throwing rose petals in the air? It seems to me to be an incredible sort of vanity to take a work of genius and to traduce it for the sake of a director’s vision (the “acclaimed” Christopher Alden), particularly when, as in this case, the action is clearly fighting the music. If I wasn’t allowed to write these pieces from time to time, I think I would explode.

At least the week finished cheerfully with a visit to the Speaker’s House and some of the most handsome state rooms I’ve seen, full of portraits, plush and Pugin. I was taking part in a debate with schoolchildren from around the country and I was struck by how focused they were, how well informed and how articulate. Independence for Scotland got a big thumbs-down here. A ban on smoking got some support – though one girl suggested, quite generously I thought, restricting sales to two packets per person a day. Mr Speaker was very engaging, not at all like his press image, which often portrays him as a bitter, unappreciated jester. Or am I thinking of Rigoletto?