Tom Holland (author)

Early life

Holland was born near Oxford and brought up in the village of Broadchalke near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. He was educated at Chafyn Grove School, Canford School, and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he obtained a double First in English and Latin.

Career

He has adapted Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio 4. His novels are set in the past, and generally include a supernatural/horror element. He is the author of several non-fiction books about the ancient world.

In 2004, he was awarded the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content, for his book Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.

In 2005, James Buchan reviewed Persian Fire positively for The Guardian newspaper, while Paul Cartledge, a professor of Greek history at Cambridge University recommended it for The Independent thus: "If Persian Fire does not win the Samuel Johnson Prize, there is no justice in this world." Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, historian Dominic Sandbrook reported it as "riveting" and praised the "enormous strengths" of the author.

In February 2011, he presented and wrote Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters, a BBC Four television programme exploring the influence of fossils on mythology.

In August 2012, he produced a documentary for Channel 4 television entitled Islam: The Untold Story, which provoked what Holland described as "a firestorm of death threats" against him. Contributors included Professor Patricia Crone. The programme generated more than 1,000 complaints received by Ofcom and Channel 4. A planned screening of Islam: The Untold Story before an audience of historians was cancelled, due to security concerns raised from threats received by Holland as a result of the documentary. Iranian State media called it an insult to Islam and the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA) accused Holland of making “baseless assumptions” and engaging in “selective scholarship”. His book on Islam In the Shadow of the Sword was criticized by Glen Bowersock of the Guardian of being written in "a swashbuckling style that aims more to unsettle his readers than to instruct them," and devoid of quality.

Views

Politics

In August 2014, Holland was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

Islam

In March 2015, Holland published a piece entitled "We must not deny the religious roots of Islamic State" in the New Statesman. It argued that the jihadis of ISIS call themselves Islamic and people like Mehdi Hasan ought not to deny it, as he had in the previous week's issue. Holland wrote that "It is not merely coincidence that ISIS currently boasts a caliph, imposes quranically mandated taxes, topples idols, chops the hands off thieves, stones adulterers, executes homosexuals and carries a flag that bears the Muslim declaration of faith." On May 2015, Holland gave the inaugural Christopher Hitchens Lecture at the Hay Festival, in which he addressed the subject of De-Radicalising Muhammad. In an interview he gave to the literary website Quadrapheme the following month he explained that he wanted the lecture to promote discussion of the way Muhammad's life is interpreted, arguing that his "mythos lies at the core of what is pernicious in the goings-on of Islamic State and other radicals". In the same interview he provided an insight into his own views, asserting that "Liberalism is essentially Christianity-lite, and you can include atheism and secularism in that bracket too—these are basically Christian heresies. The ethics involved are really New Testament ones." and adding later, when asked about resistance to his views on Islam, that "when I write about Islam my anxiety, and the reason I always pull my punches, isn’t that I’m afraid I’ll be killed, it’s that I’m afraid to be drummed out of the liberal club."

Personal life

Holland lives in London with his wife and two daughters. He is a keen cricket fan and member of the Authors XI cricket team. He has written about receiving batting training from England captain Alastair Cook, and once hit a six.