ANTHONY HOROWITZ, one of the most prolific and successful writers in the UK, is speaking urgently and I passionately. "You can take the 'N' word out of James Bond or the 'fat' word out of Roald Dahl, but that is only the beginning. They will ask for a word, then it will be a paragraph, then it will be a page, then it will be the whole book, then it will be the whole author - and that is already happening" Horowitz has had a 40-year career and is one of Britain's best-selling novelists.
He has written more than 50 books, including the latest James Bond and Sherlock Holmes novels, as well as TV series, films and plays and is the creator of both Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders. But even he fears the chill of cancel culture. "Even speaking to you in this interview," he tells me.
"Every word I am speaking to you now I am thinking about before I utter it. That didn't used to be the case." He has agreed to speak about free speech and attacks on artistic freedom because he feels a sense of duty to highlight the "new atmosphere of relentlessness in seeking punishment, retribution and cancellation" in the literary world.
Critics are like sharks waiting to jump, he says, and offence has no time limit.
"You can offend somebody in the 21st century with something you said in 1970." He is restless and energetic, talking with force on a subject that clearly fires him up. The free speech debate, as highlighted in the Evening Standard's recent inquiry, is an "extremely important subject that writers have a responsibility to contribute to", he says.
He points to what is happening in America, which is "always one step ahead of us", where books including Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, have been withdrawn from some libraries.
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