HOLLAND, Tom 1967-

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in England; married Saddie Holland; children: Katy. Education: Cambridge University, graduated (double firsts); Oxford University, began work toward a Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

Attis (novel), Allison & Busby (London, England), 1995.

Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron (novel), Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1995, published as The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, Little, Brown (London, England), 1995.

Supping with Panthers (sequel to Lord of the Dead), Little, Brown (London, England), 1996.

Deliver Us from Evil (novel), Little, Brown (London, England), 1997.

The Sleeper in the Sands (novel), Little, Brown (London, England), 1998.

The Bonehunter (novel), Little, Brown (London, England), 2001.

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (nonfiction), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003, published as Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Little, Brown (London, England), 2003.

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (nonfiction), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2005.

The Poison in the Blood (chapbook), Abacus, 2006.

Also adapter of Greek and Roman classics for BBC Radio, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Virgil.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tom Holland was born near Salisbury, England, and raised in a small village near Stonehenge, an area of the country that is steeped in tales of the supernatural. He received a classical education in English and Latin at Cambridge University, developing a particular admiration for the works of Virgil and of the English Romantic poets. Following graduation, he began working toward a doctorate at Oxford, with a focus on Lord Byron, but eventually abandoned his studies in favor of starting a career. After struggling in London doing various odd jobs, Holland stumbled into writing for the radio, and has adapted the works of a number of classic writers, including Homer, Herodotus, and Virgil, into radio scripts. He went on to write both fiction and nonfiction with equal success. His novels combine his love of history and horror to create literary tales that seek to both entertain and inform. Holland credits his father's love of what he calls "old-fashioned and politically incorrect tastes in literature"—books by authors such as Rider Haggard, John Buchan, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—for the subject matter he prefers in his own reading and writing. In an interview with Georges T. Dodds for SF Site, Holland remarked: "I think when you are steeped in the language of a particular style at an early age, it stays with you for life; certainly both my brother and I have an ability to talk like regimental colonels together."

Holland's first novel, Attis, reflects his study of the classics, rather than his father's influence. The story takes a cast of historical Roman characters, including the poet Catullus, Pompey, Cicero, and Julius Caesar, and updates their intrigues to a modern-day Rome complete with cars and computer technology. A series of murders has occurred that appear to be linked to the political machinations between the key figures of the time, as well as to the Circassian cult of Sesostris. Dodds commented of the novel: "While such a setting might be appropriate and perhaps even innovative to the top-heavy tottering Empire on the brink of moral and political collapse that it seeks to depict, it is nonetheless somewhat jarring at times." He praised Holland's research, however, and went on to note that "the quality of Mr. Holland's prose … given that it was his first-written work, lifts the book above the great majority of works of horror or inner-city fiction out there."

In his next novel, Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron, Holland draws upon his education in English literature—specifically, his fascination with the Romantic poets and their own flirtation with horror and gothic tales. The book is an homage of sorts to The Vampyre, by John Polidori, a one-time physician to Lord Byron who wrote his story as a means of condemning his former friend and patient in print. Ultimately, the plan backfired, making Byron appear foppish and overly self-indulgent. The novel proved to be the first to present a vampire as a charismatic individual and set the stage for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula and its more modern literary descendents. Holland takes Polidori's creation one step further: in his version, Byron himself becomes a vampire during his travels in Greece. In an interview with David Mathew for Infinity Plus, Holland explained: "At the same time I'd been doing a Ph.D. on Byron and had been very struck by Byron's profound influence on the vampire myth; and the more I looked at Byron's biography the more it struck me that maybe Byron had been a vampire. So that was the idea behind the … book." A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked: "With this striking, highly original debut, Holland offers a valuable addition to the vampire legend."

Holland followed up his Byronic vampire novel with a sequel, Supping with Panthers. This second volume follows Dr. John Eliot as he investigates a terrible epidemic in the farthest reaches of India, the symptoms of which include a compulsion to drink human blood. Kim Fawcett, in a review for SF Site, felt that the book "offers some good story-telling and has moments of true subtlety and style." She suggested, though, that the story becomes a bit too involved: "Holland mixes up Kali myths, vampires, ghouls, Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker, Lord Byron (yes, the poet), and an ancient all-powerful evil. That's an awful lot to deal with in one book."

Holland's nonfiction books focus on classical history. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a layman's history of the end of the Roman Republic, and Holland draws parallels between that high-stress period in time and modern society. History: Review of New Books critic Ronald J. Weber observed that Holland has an advantage as "a modern novelist and a popularizer whose characters are drawn within human not heroic parameters, so that casual readers can identify with the participants in the republic's great, historical events in a way not experienced in traditional histories." A contributor for Publishers Weekly concluded: "With the skill of a good novelist, Holland weaves a rip-roaring tale of political and historical intrigue." In Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, Holland gives Persian history a similar treatment, focusing on the Persian wars and using his understanding of the period to flesh out what is known fact. In a review for Booklist, Brendan Driscoll attested that "one suspects that Holland's engaging narrative would do Herodotus proud."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1995, Ray Olson, review of Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron, p. 668; January 1, 2004, Bryce Christensen, review of Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, p. 814; May 1, 2006, Brendan Driscoll, review of Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, p. 67.

Bookseller, June 17, 2005, "Holland to Write New Historical Epic," p. 15; September 2, 2005, review of Persian Fire, p. 12; October 28, 2005, John Lewis, review of Persian Fire, p. 15.

Business Week, June 27, 2005, "The Books of Summer: From Neocons to Julius Caesar, Here's a Sampler for Vacation," p. 132.

Contemporary Review, June, 2004, George Wedd, review of Rubicon, p. 375.

Geographical, February, 1999, Melanie Train, review of The Sleeper in the Sands, p. 83.

History: Review of New Books, summer, 2004, Ronald J. Weber, review of Rubicon, p. 166.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2003, review of Rubicon, p. 1351; March 1, 2006, review of Persian Fire, p. 221.

Library Journal, April 1, 2006, Sean Flemming, review of Persian Fire, p. 107.

Publishers Weekly, December 4, 1995, review of Lord of the Dead, p. 53; November 24, 2003, review of Rubicon, p. 50; March 20, 2006, review of Persian Fire, p. 47.

Spectator, August 23, 2003, Allan Massie, "What Did the Republic Die Of?," p. 33; October 8, 2005, Frederic Raphael, "When the Greeks Stood Together," p. 50.

ONLINE

Guardian Unlimited Books,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (September 10, 2005), James Buchan, review of Persian Fire.

Independent Online,http://www.independent.co.uk/ (September 4, 2005), William Napier, review of Persian Fire.

Infinity Plus Online,http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/ (November 8, 2006), David Mathew, "Vampire, Sand, and Horses."

SF Site,http://www.sfsite.com/ (November 8, 2006), Kim Fawcett, review of Supping with Panthers; Georges T. Dodds, review of Attis; Victoria Strauss, review of Deliver Us from Evil; Georges T. Dodds, review of The Sleeper in the Sands. *