Real lives: Professor Tony impressed all with work and joie de vivre

Published on Friday 12 June 2009 10:10

Professor Anthony Holden, a respected scholar and former tutor at Edinburgh University, has died aged 84.

Born in Kent in 1925, Tony Holden moved around during his childhood and youth, as his father, a congregational minister, was called to appointments in Leeds and Torquay.

Called up for war service in 1943, he joined the Royal Navy, serving aboard the carrier HMS Victorious as she sailed between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. He saw active service off the Nicobar Islands in October 1944, Sumatra in January 1945 and then at Okinawa in May of that year.

Once demobbed, he attended King's College, London, where he studied for a degree in French, spending a year abroad at the University of Lyon.

After graduating in 1949, he and his new wife, Gaby Bryson, whom he married in 1950, went as English assistants to schools in Reims, a base Prof Holden used for regular weekly visits to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

After time spent studying at Paris and Chartres, including time at the Sorbonne, he was appointed a lecturer in the study of Romance languages at Edinburgh University in 1955.

Prof Holden's monumental edition of the Roman de Rou, which chronicles the history of the dukes of Normandy, was published in three volumes between 1970-3 after 15 years of scholarship.

He retired from the university in 1990, but was persuaded to return for high-level language classes up until 2005.

His final work, published in that year, was an edition of the colourful life of 12th-century monk Eustache le Moine, who later became a pirate, mercenary and warlord.

Prof Holden's retirement was spent enjoying time with friends at the Bailie Bar in Stockbridge, where he would travel to on Saturday afternoons from his top-storey flat in the New Town's Scotland Street.

Despite caring little for football, Prof Holden was said to memorise the day's scores to the entertainment of his drinking buddies. He also took many a happy trip to Clermont-Ferrand in France, where his daughter, Vicky, was married and raising a family.

These years were marred, however, in 1997 by the tragic death of his son, Mark.

He was a brilliant young bioscientist who possessed considerable promise and his work at the universities of Edinburgh and Leeds had begun to lay the foundations for the second international academic reputation in the family.

Prof Holden is survived by his widow, Gaby, by his daughter and his son-in-law Mouldias well as his two grandsons, Sofien and Alexandre.