Five years after I swore I’d finished with him, it’s odd to be back on the road with Alex Rider. It’s also quite confusing. In the 16 years it’s taken me to write the books, Alex has aged just 15 months while I’ve experienced 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the Arab spring, Brexit, Presidents Obama and Trump, and Theresa May. Until a few months ago, I would have said that life feels much the same in the UK where Alex and I live. But three terrorist attacks, the election and the horrendous fire at Grenfell Tower threaten to tear us apart. Even the queen was heckled when she visited the disaster site… surely a totemic moment.
I have a very slender, personal connection with one of the people who died at Grenfell Tower. I met Khadija Saye at the Venice Biennale and was immediately drawn to her luminous, very evocative daguerreotypes in the Diaspora Pavilion, which was dedicated to the work of emerging artists from diverse backgrounds. We got chatting and I liked her immediately. She had a huge personality and she was so happy to be there, in Venice for the first time. Bizarrely, we discovered we’d both gone to the same public school. Although Khadija was a touch reticent about the experience, she had won a scholarship to Rugby when she was 16. I can’t believe she’s gone.
I had launched Alex at the Hay-on-Wye book festival which, with its green fields, marquees, tea shops and endless rain, conjures up an image of a much more familiar Britain. The economics of book festivals puzzle me. Writers sell a quarter of a million tickets but receive next to nothing themselves. Not unless they’re Bill Clinton, who reputedly received £20,000 in 2001.
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