Anthony Holden interview by Patrick Brennan. For Tina Neylon.

In terms of biographers they don't come much bigger than Anthony Holden. While
still a journalist and features editor with The Times in London, Holden was
commissioned at the age of 30 to write a biography of Prince Charles as the royal
himself turned 30. Holden has since written two more biographies of Charles, both
blistering attacks on the heir apparent to the throne and the position of his
English monarchy in modern Britain.
Anthony Holden has written definitive biographies of Tchaikovsky and Laurence
Olivier. Born in Lancashire and educated at Oxford, he is an admired translator of
works from the classics to opera libretti. His translations of Don Giovanni and The
Barber of Saville for Jonathan Miller at the English National Opera being his most
famous libretti. He has written a book about the history of the Oscars and an
account of a year as a professional gambler called Big Deal.
"I guess it's partly down to lack of imagination and being over-educated that I
haven't written novels," demurs Holden, as he finishes off a glass of wine and
lights up another cigarette in The Side-Door Restaurant of The Shelbourne Hotel in
Dublin. "My wife, Cindy Blake, is a novelist. I find my critical training means
that when I look at something fictional that I've written I just can't swallow it
and I throw it out. But, perhaps, it is true that biographers are novelist
manques."
Holden says his books about the English Royals sell ten times his other works so
they finance the projects he really wants to write about. One fancies this was
partly why he was able to attempt the impossible - write a biography of
Shakespeare. His current book is simply entitled, William Shakespeare.
Popular opinion has it that little or nothing is known about the Bard of Avon and
that you could put all that is known about the life of the man who wrote the
greatest plays in the English language on the back of a postage stamp. Naturally,
Holden asserts there is more available about Will Shakespeare than that.
"The last great biography of Shakespeare was by Anthony Burgess. He also wrote a
fictional novel based on Shakespeare's life," says Anthony Holden. "Like I say in
the prologue my biography claims no more than what Burgess called 'the right of
every Shakespeare-lover who has ever lived to paint his own portrait of the man'. I
read English at university and have always loved Shakespeare but there's also this
thing that each era wants to look at itself through Shakespeare.
"I also get very upset at the way Shakespeare is taught in schools," continues
Holden. "Children are told it's difficult from the word go and it puts them off. I
started taking my own children to Shakespeare plays when they were quite young.
Their first was Hamlet at the National Theatre when Daniel Day Lewis had his famous
nervous breakdown. His father had just died and Hamlet seeing his father's ghost
triggered some unfinished business.
"I saw how fearsome Hamlet was when I watched it through my kids' eyes but they
have loved Shakespeare ever since because it was just a natural part of their
growing up. The film Shakespeare In Love is similar. You had all these kids who
really enjoyed it and didn't know that half of what they were hearing were lines
from Shakespeare. I'm sure they came out thinking 'Hey I thought this guy was
difficult' and 'I'd like to find out more about this Shakespeare guy!"
Holden points out that more is actually known about Shakespeare than any other of
his contemporaries apart from Ben Johnson. Between the birth, marriage and death
registers at Stratford and Public Records Office in London there are more than 50
references to Shakespeare. He was late paying his taxes one year. The King of
England presented him with a scarlet scarf. There's Shakespeare's last will and
testament. And so on.
He admits he speculates here and there but he always lets the reader know this is
what he is doing. And, he emphasises, a lot of the time he is simply using his good
journalistic sense in finding the links and tying apparently unconnected events
together. He compares it to the work he did for The Sunday Times 'inside-team' in
Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
"Academics often miss these things or frown upon even considered probability," says
Holden. "What I did was look around to see what was happening in Shakespeare's life
at the time and put two and two together. For example, there's a note on record
that Shakespeare had a 'merry meeting with his friends Ben Johnson and the poet
Michael Drayton after which he caught a fever and died'.
"Now, Shakespeare's 11 year-old son isn't long dead and his younger daughter is
getting married to a bad lot, a fellow who has made another girl pregnant a month
earlier. The younger daughter was the twin of the son who died and so he's reminded
of the boy. He's in Stratford and hates it. They've even closed all the theatres
there.
"We know from the gossip/diarist Aubrey that Shakespeare didn't drink much. What
was this special occasion then? Well, I suggest it had to be his daughter's wedding
reception. That's how I worked. Shakespeare's life was as colourful and dramatic as
his plays. I think people want to know what kind of man composed these
masterpieces."
Holden, himself, has also won many awards as a journalist. He was roundly lauded
when he left The Times in 1982 after Rupert Murdoch had fired Harold Evans. Evans
had brought Holden with him to The Times as his possible successor but, says
Holden, the situation was impossible there. If he wrote an anti-Thatcher or anti-
Reagan editorial he was brought before Murdoch and given a telling off.
"The dumbing down of the press? Well, before Murdoch took over The Times Roy
Thompson was the owner and we could attack Thompson Holidays or Thompson's Golden
Pages. There was a lot of money for investigative journalism. He was an enlightened
man. Now, Sophie Dahl going to New York gets full front-page colour. It's just
become a glorified tabloid.
"Murdoch is only interested in newspapers to further his links with government and
enhance his commercial empire. I met him once after I left and, as much as I
despise the man, he was right when he said that it was the best thing I ever did
because it meant I could go and do what I wanted, namely, write books."
Holden is a committed republican these days in the sense that he wants to see an
end to the monarchy in Britain and a true modern democracy. But he still lives in
the U.S. He believes Prince Charles has gone from an idealist to a dyed-in-the-wool
reactionary, blue-blood, one who expects respect because of his birth. Tony Blair
is reported to have called the Price a 'goon' and Holden finds that an appropriate
term for Charles.
"My next project is a biography of Leigh Hunt," concludes Anthony Holden. "A lot of
people will go, 'who?'. But he was a friend of Shelley's, Keats and Byron and
started a paper with the latter in Pisa. He was imprisoned in 1813 for slandering
the then Prince of Wales but continued to produce his newspaper from prison. So,
he's a hero for journalists. He lived until 75, reviewed Edmund Keane's Othello and
was lampooned as Skimpole in Dickens' Bleak House.
"It'll probably sell about three copies but I shall love doing it and it will
probably further scholarship on a man who was a minor writer but a major figure of
his time."
Anthony Holden's William Shakespeare is published by Little, Brown and Company.
Hardback price: �20 sterling.