Slow Horses creator Mick Herron believes his books have been stolen by tech giants to be used as learning tools for the next generation of artificial intelligence. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” he sighs. “About two years ago, my younger brother showed me some app he had and he asked it to write a recipe for chocolate brownies in the style of Jackson Lamb. “What it came up with was s***, but it was clearly s*** based on having knowledge of Jackson Lamb and how he operates.”
Which is the crux of the matter, according to the bestselling author, who is taking the helm of this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, supported by the Daily and Sunday Express. “It can only manipulate stuff that’s already there. I believe that 110%, and I think it’s true of any major character,” he continues. “AI could write Fast & Furious 11 without a problem, I would have thought, but it can’t do a book that would truly engage the heart and the intellect.”
Not that Herron, 61, who was born in Newcastle but lives and works in Oxford, underestimates the threat AI presents to the creative arts. Major US authors, including the likes of Michael Connelly, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult, have already launched legal action against tech firm OpenAI in America to protect their copyright. Would Herron – who eschews social media (“never having been on it saved me having to leave it once it became apparent it was all being run by megalomaniac sociopaths”) and carries an old-fashioned “brick” phone – support such a move in the UK?
“I’m not a proactive public person,” he admits with a smile. “So I’m not going to be the one to stand up and raise the banner or anything, but I’d probably be standing by the side – clapping – as it marches past. Depending on what happens in the States, of course, I think it’s probably likely to happen here some time.”
It’s fair to say that former journalist Herron, who laboured for years in relative obscurity before Slow Horses brought fame, and presumably fortune, is having a bit of a moment. As well as his Harrogate role, his hit Apple TV+ adaptation, starring Gary Oldman as his odious spymaster Jackson Lamb, alongside Kristen Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner and rising star Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, returns for a fifth blockbuster season later this year.
And a new adaptation of his non-Slow Horses first book, 2003’s Down Cemetery Road, has wrapped filming, adapted by Morwenna Banks and starring Emma Thompson as private eye Zoë Boehm and Ruth Wilson as her client, Sarah Tucker, in a new eight-part drama featuring a mysterious explosion and a missing girl. The success of Slow Horses – which the BBC infamously opted not to adapt – has been especially gratifying, admits the softly-spoken spy writer.
“Obviously I wrote the base material for the show, but what the scriptwriters, what the directors, and what the cast have done with it has just transformed it. I think they’ve all done a wonderful job,” he adds.
“We’ve all seen shows based on books we love that have been an embarrassment. I knew it was going to be good as soon as we found out who was in it and who was writing it, but I wasn’t expecting it to be embraced so warmly by such a large number of people given that, the things that I write about, it could have put people’s backs up quite easily.”
He means his gloriously cynical view of politics and politicians, presumably?
“Yeah, so it could easily be treated with extreme disdain by parts of the press, but those parts of the press are the ones that seem to me to have taken it to their heart’s most ready. It’s been lovely – I’ve been very, very happy about it.”
As for Down Cemetery Road, he continues: “They’ve filmed it partly in Oxford and partly in Bristol and partly in various other places like Cornwall. Most of them standing in for somewhere else. What I’ve seen of it is very exciting and the cast is equally tremendous.”
While many authors are struggling, Herron, one of the nicest writers in crime fiction, accepts his own success with modest grace. “If we are all in a computer simulation, I’ve definitely got the right player!” he jokes. “I’m very aware of the amount of luck that goes into a success. Philip Pullman likes to say you need talent, hard work and luck. And hard work is the only thing you have any control over when it comes to a career. So I’ll stick to that. But I’m really appreciative of the luck that I’ve had. And I don’t take it for granted.”
Special guests at Harrogate this year include Lee and Andrew Child, Irvine Welsh, Mark Billingham and US author Attica Locke. Herron, who won the prestigious Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year gong for Slough House in 2022 – “one of my career highlights,” he smiles – will host an in-conversation event with Slow Horses showrunner Will Smith.
He says: “For me, the big thing is always just being at Harrogate. The Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival is a major highlight of any crime writer’s year. So just being there is great and to be the programming chair is such an honour – it’ll be all my birthdays come at once.”
Oxford University-educated Herron adds that he enjoyed trying to strike a balance in the line-up between “new writers appearing and taking their part in the great carousel of crime writing, and to have old favourites there whom everybody wants to see”. While doing this he kept in mind how Harrogate was singled out, unfairly many felt, for a lack of diversity in its panel events last year.
He says: “It’s something we are always aware of, it’s my first time sitting on the committee, but I know an awful lot of work goes into addressing those issues. These things ought to be second nature by now, but it’s still a struggle to find the right balance when publishers aren’t necessarily putting forward a hugely diverse range of authors. The committee has had to go out and find authors who haven’t been championed by publishers to get the balance right. But we think we have got that balance.”
Herron, who will also interview Mark Billingham at the festival for his 25th Tom Thorne thriller, has been busy writing his first Jackson Lamb novel for three years, Clown Town, which will be published in September. About this he would only say: “I’d probably better keep that for Harrogate itself.”
- Mick Herron is programming chair for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival taking place in Harrogate from July 17 to 20. Visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com for tickets and information