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Anthony Holden, a polymath and prolific British author, journalist and poker player who found accidental fame as a royal biographer and critic of the monarchy but who was happier writing books on Shakespeare, Laurence Olivier and Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, has died. in October. .7 at his London home. He was 76 years old.
The cause was a brain tumor, his son Ben said.
Holden was writing the gossip column “Atticus” – a frothy mix of politics and celebrity – for The Sunday Times in London when, in 1977, he was sent to cover Prince Charles’ visit to Canada to open the Calgary Stampede, a rodeo. As “Atticus,” he had written about Brigitte Bardot and Rudolph Nureyev, accompanied Margaret Thatcher to China and being hit on the head with a rolled-up copy of Frank Sinatra’s Playboy magazine (apparently in a gesture of affection, not an attack on the press).
The prince was something of a failed mission, but Mr. Holden did his best, even though the most interesting thing Prince Charles said to him was, “Married, right? Fun, right?
The column Holden wrote about the royal trip amused both Queen Elizabeth II and her son, now King Charles III, and Holden soon received a contract to write a biography of Charles. Although he thought the subject was boring, the £15,000 advance was too large to refuse.
When “Prince Charles: A Biography” was published in 1979, it received mostly charitable reviews, even for its subject matter. Prince Charles told Mr Holden that he liked the fact that he had described a life that was “not all wine and roses”.
Holden returned to his own life as a journalist, working as a Washington correspondent for The Observer, briefly as a features editor for The Times of London, and as a freelancer for other newspapers. However, the real rhythm haunted him.
News programs invariably called him up to discuss royal matters, American journalists sought him out to try to understand that peculiar British institution, and publishing executives continued to offer him book contracts with royal themes, for soft topics like “Their Royal Highnesses: The Prince and Princess of Wales” (1981), “A Week in the Life of the Royal Family” (1983) and “Anthony Holden’s Royal Quiz” (1983).
Then, in the late 1980s, his publisher asked him to write a second biography of the prince, and what he delivered was a cold picture of the marriage of Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales. In the book, titled simply “Charles” and published in 1988, Holden wrote that the prince “no longer understands her, or even, it seems, likes her very much,” and that the princess seemed bored with him. (The book was serialized in The Sunday Times.) Buckingham Palace denounced Holden in a statement, sending the tabloids into a frenzy.
“A distorted portrait of the prince,” read one headline, which quoted a royal aide as saying the book was “fiction from start to finish.” A writer for The Express called Holden “the most reviled man in Britain.” And as Holden recalled in a 2021 memoir, “Based on a True Story: The Life of a Writer,” The Daily Mail published a hit article declaring that he had left his first wife, a “classy pianist,” by a “blonde American.” She was airheaded; he was living the good life in a mansion on the Thames; and had slandered the prince to settle his gambling debts.
What was not reported, as Holden recalled, was that his house and car were ransacked more than once, and that his research material on Prince Charles was stolen.
Mr Holden was so irritated by the scandal that he collected all his negative tabloid clippings and consulted a defamation lawyer about suing the prince.
“Mr. Holden,” said the lawyer, as Mr. Holden recalled, “you have a prima facie case against the Prince of Wales for defamation. But I strongly advise you not to pursue the matter.” He was told that he would not win the case. court of public opinion.
However, the lawyer gave permission for Holden to include his name, Peter Carter-Ruck, as well as their exchange in a future memoir. Which he did decades later.
Anthony Ivan Holden was born on 22 May 1947 in Southport, Lancashire, on the north-west coast of England, son of John and Margaret (Sharpe) Holden. His father owned a sporting goods store. His mother worked as his father’s secretary, Ivan Sharpean Olympic soccer star turned sports journalist.
Anthony attended two British boarding schools, Trearddur House, a horrible experience, he wrote, marked by beatings and other indignities, and the Oundle School, which was less horrible. He studied English language and literature at Merton College, Oxford; he edited Isis, the student magazine there; and translated ancient Greek works for Oxford University Press.
After college, he was hired as a trainee journalist by a regional newspaper chain. Covering regular police and firefighting clashes, he reported on the trial of Graham Young, a notorious and prolific poisoner. Coverage of him led to his first book, “The St. Alban Poisoner: The Life and Crimes of Graham Young,” published in 1974. In total, he wrote about 40 books.
Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called Holden’s 2000 biography “William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius” “an easy read” (not an add-on). But some critics found his “Laurence Olivier” (1988) more revealing than the actor’s own memoirs. Tchaikovsky was another of his subjects.
Holden also wrote about darker themes. In addition to Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, she wrote a biography of Leigh Hunt, a poet of Dickens’s time. She also tackled Hollywood in “Behind the Oscars: The Secret History of the Academy Awards” (1993).
The book made New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wonder why Holden had devoted nearly 700 pages to this effort.
“Since, as Holden is the first to admit, the Oscars are themselves trivial,” Lehmann-Haupt wrote in his review, “the details about the Oscars represent an order of trivialities whose contemplation no rational mind can hope to survive.” intact.”
As for why he accepted the project, Holden said he had received a large advance and was happy to spend some time in Los Angeles.
More esoterically, he translated operas into English with his first wife, Amanda (Warren) Holden, a multilingual pianist, librettist, and opera translator. The couple divorced in 1988.
In addition to his son Ben, Mr. Holden is survived by his sons Sam and Joe; his stepsons, Ben and Siena Colegrave; four grandchildren; and a brother, Robin Holden. He married Cynthia Blake, a novelist, in 1990. They separated 10 years later but did not divorce.
Mr. Holden was a lifelong poker player, with a regular Tuesday game featuring the British poet Al Alvarez (known to his readers as A. Alvarez). Once, Holden decided to try his luck in a big way and spent a year playing tournaments. He eventually qualified for the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and wrote about it in “Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player” (1990). He said it sold more than any book he had written. “Bigger Deal,” its sequel, was released in 2007.
“Tony was a real scholar,” said Tina Brown, the veteran magazine editor who was a longtime friend. (When she, in 1981, married British newspaper editor Harry Evans, Holden’s boss at the time, in East Hampton, New York, Holden walked her down the aisle.)
“He had immense talent, but he did it with a very light touch,” Brown said in an interview. “I could write the best gossip column. He was the person you turned to to do the smart, elegant shot, very quickly.” She called him “a classic Grub Street reporter” and added: “The actual stuff was almost a passing situation, but he did it brilliantly.”
Holden, an avowed anti-monarchist, wrote several increasingly critical books about the royals. When one of them, “The Tarnished Crown,” was published in 1993 by Random House, which Evans then ran, Evans took out a full-page ad in The New York Times saying that if readers didn’t learn Everything They Ever Wanted to Know About the royal family in the book, could request a refund. There were no takers.