Anthony Holden

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Anthony Holden (born 22 May 1947) is a British journalist, broadcaster and writer, particularly known as a biographer of the British Royal family and of artists including Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Lorenzo da Ponte and Laurence Olivier.

Contents

[edit] Life

He was born in Lancashire, and educated at Oundle School and the University of Oxford, where he edited the student paper Isis. He has written for a wide range of publications, and is currently music critic of The Observer.

When he was a Whitbread Prize judge in 2000 he said it would have been a "national humiliation" if Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had won, ahead of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. He had threatened to resign if that happened. Robert Harris derided this threat as "pompous." [1]

[edit] Poker

Holden is a poker player, and spent a year playing professionally while researching his 1990 book Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player (ISBN 0743294815). The book covers his experiences between the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournaments in 1988 and 1989.

In 2007, Holden published Bigger Deal: A Year Inside the Poker Boom (ISBN 0743294823), a journal of his second stint as a professional player, between the 2005 and 2006 WSOP events.

In 2005 he appeared on the chat show Heads Up with Richard Herring, to discuss his life, career and his love of poker.

[edit] Works

  • Greek Pastoral Poetry (1973) translator
  • The St Albans Poisoner: The Life And Crimes Of Graham Young (1974)
  • Charles: Prince of Wales (1979) as Prince Charles (US)
  • Laurence Olivier: A Biography (1981)
  • Their Royal Highnesses, The Prince and Princess of Wales (1981)
  • A Week In The Life Of The Royal Family (1983)
  • Great Royal Front Pages: A Scrapbook of Historic Royal Events from Queen Victoria to Baby Prince William (1983)
  • Royal Quiz (1983)
  • Of Presidents, Prime Ministers And Princes (1984)
  • Queen Mother (1985)
  • Don Giovanni: The Translation (1987) with Amanda Holden
  • Charles: A Biography (1988) as King Charles III (US)
  • The Last Paragraph. The Journalism of David Blundy (1990) editor
  • Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player (1990)
  • The Queen Mother: A 90th Birthday Tribute (1990)
  • A Princely Marriage: Charles & Diana, the First Ten Years (1991)
  • Behind The Oscar: The Secret History of the Academy Awards (1993)
  • H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother In Private (1993)
  • The Tarnished Crown (1993)
  • Tchaikovsky (1995)
  • Diana: Her Life and Legacy (1997)
  • Charles at Fifty (1998)
  • William Shakespeare: His Life and Work (1999)
  • Liber Amicorum for Frank Kermode (1999) editor with Ursula Owen
  • The Mind Has Mountains a.alvarez@lxx (1999) editor with Frank Kermode
  • The Drama of Love, Life and Death in Shakespeare (2000)
  • Shakespeare: An Illustrated Biography (2002)
  • Wit in the Dungeon (2005) biography of Leigh Hunt
  • Lorenzo Da Ponte, The Man Who Wrote Mozart (2006)
  • Olivier Biography of Laurence Olivier. Max Press (2007)

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Harry Potter in Literary Flap" Giles Elgood January 26, 2000, Reuters accessed 3 August 2007

[edit] External links