HOLDEN, Anthony Ivan (1947-2023)
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Anthony Holden, writer of non-fiction blockbusters on subjects ranging from poker to the Royal family – obituary
Holden translated Greek tragedy and wrote a biography of Tchaikovsky, but his biggest success was Big Deal, about his true passion, poker
Anthony Holden, who has died aged 76, wrote invigoratingly about his varied enthusiasms, from Tchaikovsky to Texas hold ’em, but for many years was best-known for his reluctantly inhabited role as a royal biographer.
In 1988 Holden published a biography of the then Prince Charles, in which he was the first royal commentator to reveal that Charles’s marriage to Princess Diana had, as he put it, “reached a stage of mutual and cold indifference”. The Prince’s aide denounced the book on his employer’s behalf as “fiction from beginning to end” by an author with “no inside knowledge”.
Holden had in fact interviewed dozens of people close to the Prince, and his claims about the disastrous state of the marriage would later be amply vindicated. But the tabloids declared him to be “the most reviled man in Britain” – Jean Rook of the Daily Express called for him to be “locked away in the Tower of London” – and the details of his own failed marriage were paraded. The Garrick Club, of which Charles had just been made an honorary member, blackballed him…..
The son of John Holden and his wife Margaret, Anthony Ivan Holden was born in Southport on May 22 1947. John Holden was the son of a baronet, from a family of Lancashire cotton traders, but his older brother Sir George, the third Baronet, squandered the family fortune and was reduced to living in a caravan on a farm in Yorkshire: the press dubbed him “the Baronet who lives in a pig sty”.
The defining influence on the young Tony was his maternal grandfather, Ivan Sharpe, who had played in the gold medal-winning football squad at the 1912 Olympics and was later one of the best-known sports journalists of his day. As he helped his grandfather by recording match statistics in the press box at Liverpool or Everton, Tony’s sense of the romance of journalism was kindled….
Anthony Holden’s first marriage was dissolved in 1988 and he was separated from his second wife, the American writer Cindy Blake, who survives him with three sons from his first marriage, Ben – with whom he co-edited the best-selling anthology Poems That Make Grown Men Cry – Sam and Joe.
Anthony Holden, born May 22 1947, died October 7 2023
There is also an obit in today's Times
Richard R
From the Times of 1 Dec 2023: HOLDEN Anthony Ivan died
peacefully on 7th October 2023, aged 76. Celebrated author and poker player;
beloved father of Sam, Joe and Ben; grandfather
of George, Ione, Rosie and Aurelia. A private family funeral took place on
18th October. His memorial service will be held at St Martin-in-the-Fields,
Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JH at 11am on 11th December 2023. No flowers
please but donations, if desired, to Shakespeare North Playhouse…
See separate posts on the births of his grandchildren.
Rosie & Aurelia HOLDEN (mother MCGEOCH): https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/8Spipg-lAMw
Twins George & Ione HOLDEN (mother LEVENTIS): https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/xg2bWkLqlLw