Anthony Holden 22 May 1947 - 8 October 2023 Two Obituaries

         A lifelong friend since days at Oxford was Tony Holden who died on 8 October. He had a bad stroke in 2017 but came back with all his mind working. He was still able to type with one good right hand. After his stroke he lived in a flat on Albert Bridge Road, not far from my house. So I had regular talks and wheelchair walks with him in Battersea Park and his wit, insights into politics, the arts  and scorn for Prince now King Charles never left him.

         I was contacted by the Guardian to write an obituary. It was published today .https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/22/anthony-holden-obituary His friends will be pleased at the generous space the Guardian gave his life.

         It was not the obituary I first sent in. The Times and Daily Telegraph had given major space in their print editions to obituaries of Tony but they seemed to me to be basically Wikipedia lists of jobs held, books (31) written, family details. I thought Tony deserved a note on why he was so good as a journalist, so hated by the Royal establishment, and made endless friends and no enemies other than the present king and Rupert Murdoch.

         The Guardian courteously explained they wanted a factual list of his accomplishments – what he did not why he was who he was. I re-wrote my obituary and the Guardian subbed it excellently. I have no complaints, I always follow editors’ wishes, and I am grateful to the Guardian for honouring Tony’s memory with a page today.

         Below as an add as it were about the man I met as an 18 year old to become the firmest of firm friends and  a loyal comrade who stood by me whenever I was in trouble.

         Anthony Holden was one of the 1968 generation of star Oxford journalists like Christopher Hitchens, Roger Alton, Polly Toynbee, Donald Macintyre, Martin Walker, Melanie Philips, Michael Rosen, Robert Fox, Peter Stothard, or Martin Kettle who went on to occupy leading positions in the national press, BBC, and all the new media that mushroomed  as they went off to earn a living or make a fortune.

                  National newspapers and the BBC all had training courses at the time as employers believed in training up future staff a practice that ended during the Thatcher years. Holden spent his two years in Hemel Hempstead learning shorthand, and the skills of a professional reporter now lost as bright young women and men are hired straight from Oxbridge and reporting is replaced by the ubiquitous comment piece.

         He grew up in Southport where his father ran a sports shop. His grandfather, Ivan Sharpe, had won an Olympic gold medal playing for England football team at the 1912 Olympics. A left-winger Sharpe played as an amateur for Derby County winning the then First Division championship and went on to a long career in football journalism.

         Tony talked a lot about the journalism of his grandfather liked to show a photo of Ivan Sharpe and the English football team meeting Mussolini in Rome at the 1934 FIFA World Cup. He was a devoted Arsenal fan and loved all sport.

         Tony Holden came to Merton College from Oundle and was quickly dubbed “Golden Holden” as everything he turned his hand to won fans from crusty dons to most women stars of OUDS, the university drama society.

         He read English but scrambled his school Greek into a translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon which was put on at Delphi in Greece with a future ambassador, QCs, actors and journalists in the cast.

         Holden seduced not just women but older dons and when he went to Fleet Street editors who liked his crinkly toothed smile, his always impeccable copy, and gift of turning any event or meeting with prominenti into a perfectly pitched anecdote.

         He got Robert Maxwell who had bought Isis to give his sons a position on an Oxford institution to make him editor for a year and charmed the dons at Merton to let him have a year off to edit Isis. A decade later Holden repaid the debt by using his Atticus column in the Sunday Times to promote John Jones, his English tutor, into being Oxford’s Professor of Poetry.

         Harold Evans, the star editor of his generation, hired Tony as  a reporter on the Times and then to be the last Atticus columnist, soon to be closed down when Rupert Murdoch bought the Sunday Times, and shoved it into pole position as a fawning Reagan-Thatcher Enrichissez-vous anti-union and in due course anti-European paper.

          Holden still barely 30 bagged the No 1 foreign correspondent job as the Observer’s man in Washington.

         There he enjoyed life with his fellow Oxford scribblers, Christopher Hitchens,  Martin Amis, and other 1968 generation hacks who were made welcome at his house with his first wide wife Amanda and three sons to whom he was devoted.

         Harold Evans brought him back to an executive role at the Times with the promise he would be editor. But that was to reckon without Murdoch. His interference in the paper despite his pledge to maintain editorial independence when he bought The Times and Sunday Times led to Evans being fired and Holden resigned in solidarity with his editor, one of the very few British journalists ready to stand up to the baleful influence of Murdoch who did so much damage to British journalism.

         Back in London he briefly edited an ephemeral Sunday paper owned by a provincial media mini mogul, Eddie Shaw. He gave a young Alastair Campbell his first job on a national paper. Campbell as he himself has well recorded had a very serious drink problem as a young journalist. Holden loved telling the story of having to pull strings to stop some provincial police force ending the future Labour Spinmeister’s career on account of too much drink being taken.

         As soon as he was back in London Holden joined the Labour Party of Michael Foot and Arthur Scargill as one by one many of his 1968 Oxford friends made their peace with Rupert Murdoch or began writing propaganda for the anti-Labour, anti-union Sun, Daily Mail or Spectator where the pay and expenses were far more generous than on the shrivelled impecunious left press.

         He made Pliny’s injunction Nulla  dies sine linea his own and every day produced a solid quota of lines as articles, books including biographies of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Lawrence Olivier, Oscar winners, poker,  and translation of opera libretti for the English National Opera.

         This professional love of music had been nurtured by his wife Amanda Holden but he moved on to a second wife, Cindy Blake, an American novelist, for a few years. As well as consuming women Holden consumed nearly as much hard liquor and cigarettes as his friend Christopher Hitchens. He would drive in an American roadster back from a Chiswick political dinner where  more alcohol than food was ingested dropping friends off in different corners of London before going home to Rotherhithe and his flat overlooking the Thames.

         Holden wrote the first biography of Prince Charles and returned to royal writing to expose the sham marriage with Diana. His politics always on the left with a twinkle in his eye became resolutely republican, hosting dinners to denounce Charles and the royals who he saw as a parasitical succubus making any modernisation of the British state all but impossible.

         America loved his royal commentaries laced with insider details. His book writing, royal TV commentaries,  and handsomely paid pieces for private jet firms replaced his newspaper income. He stayed a close friend of Harold Evans and Tina Brown bringing back stories of Manhattan dinner parties where Henry Kissinger defended the enormous death toll of journalists, leftists, and trade unionists during the Pinochet era as minor and unimportant.

         A serious stroke in 2017 barely slowed him down as he typed every day with his one good right hand and hosted lunches where doctors’ advice was ignored and bottles were opened.

         In a trade where schadenfreude is the norm as journalists enjoy seeing their rivals and peers get into serious trouble - usually over expenses – Holden was the loyalist of loyal friends which is why he had so many all his life.

         The glory days of print journalisn now seem long ago. Tony Holden, a National Union of Journalists’ card-holder until his death, was a master of 20th century journalism. But that was in another century.

Denis MacShane entered Merton College, Oxford on the same day as Anthony Holden. He was the youngest president of the National Union of Journalists and was a Labour MP for 18 years and served as Britain’s Minister for Europe.