Thomas Charles Louis Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines; interests which led him, perhaps inevitably, to qualify as a solicitor and emigrate to Somerset, where he specialised in death and taxes for seven years before going straight in 1995.

Now a full time writer, he lives in Chard, Somerset, with his wife, one daughter and the unmistakable scent of blood, wafting in the breeze from the local meat packing plant. His first published work was Poems by Tom Holt (1973), poetry written while he was still a child. His writing career proper began with Lucia in Wartime and Lucia Triumphant which were sequels to E. F. Benson's 'Mapp and Lucia' Sequence.

Tom Holt began publishing his comic fantasy novels in 1987 with Expecting Someone Taller, these books having gained him his biggest following.