Thomas Holland (born 5 January 1968) is a British novelist, popular historian and podcaster.
Originally a writer of Gothic fiction, he is the author of many books, including works of classical history. He is especially known for the book Dominion, on the Christian roots of Western morality.
He has worked with the BBC to create historical television documentaries and presented the radio series Making History. He co-hosts the podcast The Rest Is History with the historian Dominic Sandbrook; it is the highest-ranked UK history podcast on Spotify and Apple.
Early life and education Born in 1968, Thomas Holland grew up in the village of Broad Chalke near the cathedral city of Salisbury in Wiltshire, the elder of two sons. His younger brother James Holland is an author whose focus is the Second World War. Holland has said that his two passions as a child were dinosaurs and ancient civilisations: "I had the classic small boy's fascination with dinosaurs – because they're glamorous, dangerous and extinct – and essentially the appeal of the empires of antiquity is much the same. There's a splendour and a terror about them that appealed to me – and that kind of emotional attachment is something that stays with you."
Holland attended Chafyn Grove preparatory school in Salisbury, and the independent Canford School, near Wimborne Minster, in Dorset. He then went on to Queens' College, Cambridge,'HOLLAND, Thomas (born 5 January 1968)' in Who's Who 2013 graduating with a "double first" (first-class honours in both parts I and II of the course of study in the English Tripos), specialising in the works of Virgil and the English Romantic poets. He began working on a doctoral dissertation on Lord Byron at the University of Oxford, but soon quit after deciding that he was "fed up with universities and fed up with being poor" and instead began working.
Writing career
Novels Holland's first books were Gothic horror novels about vampires, set in various time periods.
His first novel, The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron (1995), drew on his knowledge of Byron from his university studies and recast the 19th-century poet as a vampire. It was re-titled Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron for the 1996 U.S. release. The Los Angeles Times called it "a good vampire yarn—elevated and elegant enough to make you feel you needn't conceal it behind the dust jacket of some self-help work, yet happily gory and perilous" although they felt "the newly plowed plot ground is sometimes hurried through as if to get to the scholarly stuff, where the author feels perhaps on more solid ground." Its sequel, Supping with Panthers, was published in 1996 (it was also re-titled for the U.S. release, as Slave of My Thirst).
Holland stayed with the supernatural horror genre for his next few books, continuing to use his knowledge of ancient cultures and settings. In Attis (1996) he took historical figures from the ancient Roman Republic like Pompey and the poet Catullus and put them in a modern setting among a string of brutal murders. He set 1997's Deliver Us From Evil in 17th-century England, with a man named Faustus leading an army of the undead. 1999's Sleeper in the Sands is set in Egypt, starting with the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and travelling backward in time as a deadly secret is unveiled. Dominic Montserrat, an Egyptologist, wrote that Holland utilised the material of the Amarna period of Ancient Egypt "subtly and intelligently" and in a "deft and original way". Robert Macfarlane praised the book, writing that "This is high adventure with gothic edges and a black undertow, ballasted with serious historical research. Imagine Tintin and the Pharaohs, Dracula and Sherlock Holmes stirred together and shaken up".
Holland's last novel to date departed from the supernatural. The Bone Hunter (1999) is a thriller about the rivalry between 19th-century palaeontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, around whom people begin dying.
Historical non-fiction books Holland's interest in history was renewed after reading From Alexander to Actium by the historian Peter Green, as research for The Bone Hunter. Despite having no formal qualifications in either classics or history, he gave up writing fiction and turned to writing history.
His first book of history, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, was published in 2003 and garnered positive reviews. It was called "gripping and hugely entertaining" by The Sunday Times, "informative, balanced and accessible" by BookPage, and "a model of exactly how a popular history of the classical world should be written" by The Guardian. Rubicon won the 2004 Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content. But the book also received reviews of a more negative tone, for example from Professor Ronald J. Weber of the University of Texas:
Persian Fire (2005) is an account of the 5th-century B.C. Graeco-Persian Wars. It was reviewed positively by Paul Cartledge, a professor of Greek history at Cambridge, for The Independent: "If Persian Fire does not win the Samuel Johnson Prize, there is no justice in this world." Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the historian Dominic Sandbrook called it "riveting" and praised the "enormous strengths" of the author. It won the Anglo-Hellenic League's 2006 Runciman Award.
Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (2008) examines the two centuries either side of the seminal year 1000 A.D., and how Western Europe ascended out of the Early Middle Ages, to become a leading world civilisation once again. Reviewers praised the book's lively, colourful narrative style, but often criticised Holland's overall argument. Chris Wickham wrote that
Diarmaid MacCulloch and John Gillingham similarly criticised Holland's emphasis on the Millennium and the 11th century as the birth of modernity or as a major turning point in medieval history.
Holland's book on the rise of Islam, In the Shadow of the Sword (2012), was called "a work of impressive sensitivity and scholarship" by The Daily Telegraph and "a book of extraordinary richness ... For Tom Holland has an enviable gift for summoning up the colour, the individuals and animation of the past, without sacrificing factual integrity" by The Independent. But it was criticised by the historian Glen Bowersock in The Guardian as being written in "a swashbuckling style that aims more to unsettle his readers than to instruct them ... irresponsible and unreliable".
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar (2015) covers the reigns of the five emperors of Rome's Julio-Claudian dynasty, from Augustus to Nero. Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania Emily Wilson, reviewing it for The Guardian, was critical of the "overblown style" and narrative's lurid details, saying, "this is ancient Rome for the age of Donald Trump". But in his review for The Observer, Nick Cohen wrote "Among the many virtues of Tom Holland's terrific history is that he does not shrink from seeing the Roman emperors for what they were: 'the west's primal examples of tyranny'."
Holland next wrote two short historical biographies. The first, Athelstan: The Making of England (2016), is part of the 'Penguin Monarchs' series and covers the life of Æthelstan, the 10th-century ruler regarded as the first king of England. The second, Æthelflæd: England's Forgotten Founder (2019) is an entry in the Ladybird Expert series, and tells of Athelstan's aunt (and daughter of Alfred the Great), Æthelflæd, who ruled the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia in the early 10th century.
Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (titled Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World for the US), was published in 2019. It is an examination of Christianity's influence on Western civilisation in which Holland maintains that the religion's influence continues to be seen in ethics and cultural norms throughout the world today, even when the religion itself is rejected: "To live in a western [sic] country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions." Dominion received positive reviews, with Kirkus Reviews calling it "astute and thoughtful", and Publishers Weekly saying that "entertaining is too light a term and instructive is too heavy a term for a rich work that is enjoyably both". Reviewing it for The Times, Gerard DeGroot, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of St Andrews, argued that much of what Holland attributes to Christian influence is simply humanity evolving the need to work together for survival, but said "I have to commend the originality of this book, not to mention [Holland's] brave ambition." The scholars James Orr,, Gillian Evans and Samuel Moyn all regarded the book’s earlier sections on ancient history as stronger than its later sections on more modern history. Evans writes that "The third section on "Modernitas" is perhaps the least successful, because of the degree of compression which it attempts".
Other writing Holland's translation of the Histories by Herodotus, the ancient Greek historiographer, was published in 2013. Although Holland had studied Latin at school, his Greek is largely self-taught, and he set himself the task of translating one paragraph of the over-800-page Histories every day until he finished. Kirkus Reviews called his translation "a feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period." The classics scholar Edith Hall reviewed it for The Times Literary Supplement and said it was "unquestionably the best English translation of Herodotus to have appeared in the past half-century, and there have been quite a few ... I am in awe of Tom Holland's achievement."
Upon hearing that his 2025 translation of The Lives of the Caesars was the first hardback Penguin classics edition to enter the Sunday Times nonfiction bestsellers list, Holland said that he was "delighted for Suetonius, to see the lad is capable of getting on the bestseller list after two millennia".
Holland has written dozens of articles for newspapers, journals and websites on varied topics including wildlife conservation, sport, politics and history. He also writes occasional book reviews for The Guardian.
Holland has also written for the stage. His first play, The Importance of Being Frank, told the story of Oscar Wilde's imprisonment and trial. His second was Death of a Maid, which focused on the life of Joan of Arc. In March 2019, he announced on Twitter that he had written an opera about Cleopatra and it was in the showcase stage of development.
Holland was one of the inaugural contributors to the popular Classics website Antigone.
Radio Holland adapted the writings of classical Greek and Roman authors Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides and Virgil for a series of broadcasts on BBC Radio 4. In 2001 Radio Four also broadcast a dramatic play he wrote based on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, titled Our Man in Athens. It presented the narrative as that of a veteran war reporter under siege in the studios of Radio Free Athens.
From 2011 he was one of the presenters of Radio 4's popular history series Making History.
Television Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters In February 2011 Holland wrote and presented Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters, a BBC Four television programme. It explored the influence of fossils on the mythology of various cultures throughout history, including the ancient Greeks and Native Americans.
Islam: The Untold Story