Tom Holland

Thomas Holland (born 5 January 1968) is an English author and popular historian who has published best-selling books on topics including classical and medieval history, and the origins of Islam. He has worked with the BBC to create and host historical television documentaries, and presented the radio series Making History. He co-hosts The Rest is History podcast. Early life and education Holland was born in Oxfordshire and brought up in the village of Broad Chalke near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, the elder of two sons. His younger brother James Holland is also an author whose focus is World War II. He has said that his two passions as a child were dinosaurs and ancient civilizations: "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 and the independent Canford School in Dorset. He then went on to Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating with a 'Double First' (first-class honours in both parts I and II of the course of study in the English Tripos). He began working on a doctoral dissertation on Lord Byron, at Oxford University, but soon quit after deciding that he was "fed up with universities and fed up with being poor" and instead began working.