Based on a True Story

From poker to poetry, poisoners to princes, opera to the Oscars, Shakespeare to Olivier, Mozart to Murdoch, Anthony Holden seems to have rolled many writers’ lives into one. Author of 35 books on a ‘crazy’ range of subjects, this cocky Lancashire lad-turned-bohemian citizen of the world has led an apparently charmed life from Merseyside to Buckingham Palace, the White House and beyond. As he turns 70, the award-winning journalist and biographer – grandson of an England footballer, son of a seaside shopkeeper, friend of the famous from Princess Diana to Peter O''Toole, Mick Jagger to Salman Rushdie – spills the beans on showbiz names to literary sophisticates, rock stars to royals as he looks back whimsically and wittily on a richly varied, anecdote- and action-packed career – concluding, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, that ‘Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well’.

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'A writer's life told by a born writer - beautifully observed, brilliantly written, wonderfully evocative. It's a story of our time - featuring some of the most remarkable characters of our time - funny, moving and telling; a roller-coaster of a good read, at times hilarious, at times heart-breaking. My book of the year.' Gyles Brandreth

Product details

• Authors: Anthony Holden, Anthony Holden
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 30.03.2023
• EAN: 9781471154690
• ISBN: 978-1-4711-5469-0
• No. of pages: 384
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre > Biographies, autobiographies; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; Memoirs, Press & journalism, Autobiography: literary, Autobiography: writers, Publishing industry and journalism, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs