Tom Holt was born in 1961, and produced his first book, Poems by Tom Holt, at the age of thirteen. He began writing his distinctive brand of comic fantasy while at Oxford, and has also written two well-recieved historical novels, as well as collaborating on the (unauthorised) biography of Margaret Thatcher, I, Margaret. He is married, and lives in Chard, Somerset, "just downwind of the meat canning factory".