Globally-bestselling author Anthony Horowitz joins Festival of Chichester line-up

Since they first burst onto our book shelves more than 20 years ago, the Alex Rider stories have been a masterclass in immersive, pulse-racing action; and the world’s best-loved teen superspy shows no sign of slowing down.

You can join Anthony and Kate in Chichester Cathedral on June 27 at 7.30pm. It will also be an opportunity to hear about Anthony’s latest book for adults, Close to Death. Books will be on sale at the venue and Anthony will be available for signing at the end of the evening. Tickets from the Festival of Chichester box office.

Kate, who launched her new paperback The Ghost Shop at this year’s festival, said: “Anthony is one of the authors that I admire the most. He is supremely gifted in many areas, writing for children and for adults and the continuation series he did with James Bond and he is also a brilliant script writer of his own work and also for series such as Foyle's War and many of the best early David Suchet Poirots. He's a superstar writer and is utterly wonderful and is a great friend. And it's great to be able to interview him as a fundraiser for the Chichester Children’s BookFest.

“The book festival is a relatively new organisation but it has a very clear mission statement to make sure that reading for fun is available to every child and that children have access to authors and to books and to conversations about reading. Too often reading is something that can be seen as a bit of a chore rather than a wonderful escape, a chance to be anywhere you want and to be anyone you want. The book festival has a huge programme of events and it does so much to engage with children and this is a very good way to raise funds towards the work that they do. It all costs money and it's very important that we support the beautiful work that they do with children.”

Anthony has written more than 50 books including the bestselling teen spy series Alex Rider, which is estimated to have sold 21 million copies worldwide and has been turned into a successful TV series by Amazon Freevee. A third series has just been filmed. Anthony is also an acclaimed writer for adults and was commissioned to write two new Sherlock Holmes novels The House of Silk and Moriarty. He was commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to write continuation novels for James Bond with Trigger Mortis and Forever and Day, published in 2015 and 2018 respectively. A third novel in the series With a Mind to Kill was published in May 2022. Anthony’s award-winning novel Magpie Murders was published in October 2016 to critical acclaim and was serialised on BritBox at the beginning of 2022 with Lesley Manville in the lead role.

•This year, the Festival of Chichester is delighted to welcome Kenton Budd as its principal sponsor.