Based On A True Story: A Writer’s Life

by Anthony Holden

From poker to poetry, poisoners to princes, opera to the Oscars, Shakespeare to Olivier, Mozart to Murdoch, Anthony Holden seems to have rolled many writers’ lives into one. Author of 35 books on a ‘crazy’ range of subjects, this cocky Lancashire lad-turned-bohemian citizen of the world has led an apparently charmed life from Merseyside to Buckingham Palace, the White House and beyond. As he turns 70, the award-winning journalist and biographer – grandson of an England footballer, son of a seaside shopkeeper, friend of the famous from Princess Diana to Peter O'Toole, Mick Jagger to Salman Rushdie – spills the beans on showbiz names to literary sophisticates, rock stars to royals as he looks back whimsically and wittily on a richly varied, anecdote- and action-packed career – concluding, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, that ‘Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well’.

Genres: Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published October 23, 2021

About the author

Anthony Holden is an English writer, broadcaster and critic, particularly known as a biographer of artists.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was aware of Anthony as a journalist and newspaper editor in the 1970s and 80s, during the hectic years when Harold Evans edited The Times, when Eddy Shah launched Today, and when Rupert Murdoch took on the print unions. But then he faded from view. Turns out he was writing biographies of Prince Charles, and playing a lot of poker, neither of which are calculated to catch my attention. So I'm a little chagrined that, when I met him years later, a few months before his disabling stroke, I didn't take the chance to ask him about . . . well, everything and everybody.

Boy, he's had some life. Clearly he has a journalists's curiosity, and a great gift for friendship. You name an interesting and/or distinguished person from the last half century and odds-on Holden will know them, probably have had lunch with them, and remain on friendly terms. And then there was the year he spent making a living as a professional poker player. But there's also a sense, understated but definitely there, that the first part of his career went better than the second: his newspaper career started brilliantly but never quite recovered post-Murdoch; the royal biographies were at first well-received by their subjects but later on met with a distinct froideur from The Palace.

Nonetheless, thoroughly engaging, and spiced with a selection of good stories from one who was there when it all happened.

[Sam Prince · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating romp of a lifetime compressed into a single book.

Certainly not your average autobiography, Tony Holden's life is so full of adventure, charm and laughter it may leave you questioning your own life choices. Yes, in many ways this is a life of rarefied privilege, but with the cards he was dealt Holden has clearly played the game fantastically well.