William Holt

This SideTrack looks at some aspects of the life and works of William – Billy – Holt

Biography
Books by William Holt

Biography

Billy Holt, the eldest son of Arthur Holt, was born in Joshua Street, Todmorden in 1897.

As a boy, Billy worked in the local mills.

He was largely self-educated.

In the 1950s, he became a well-known, local character wearing his Panama hat and riding his white Arab horse – Trigger – around Halifax. He had rescued Trigger from a Todmorden rag-and-bone man's cart for £5 in 1956. In 1964, the two – a 66-year-old man and a horse, well over 10 years old – made a 9,000 mile trek across Europe.

With the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the Lancashire Fusiliers - despite being under age. He returned to Todmorden when the war was over, but he lead an unsettled life and frequently travelled abroad.

He was a great adventurer whose jobs included:

Artist. His works included
- Christ overcoming space and eternity
- Diadem
- Consider the lilies
Freelance broadcaster with the BBC making frequent broadcasts on industrial topics
Coalman
Elected Communist Party member of Todmorden Town Council [21st February 1933].
He was one of the Todmorden Communists and was imprisoned at Wakefield for 9 months at Leeds Assizes in 1932
Deck-hand
Editor
Farmer
Film stunt man in Berlin
Holiday camp owner when, in 1919, he established the Hawden Hall Holiday Camp & Tea Gardens at Hardcastle Crags
Infantryman throughout World War I
Inventor. He invented a new type of shuttle and went to India to discuss its production and use there. At one time, he lived with a holy man in a cave in India
Linguist
Mill-worker
Logger
War correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War
Weaver
Writer of numerous books about his travels (many copies of which he himself sold door-to-door from horseback). He was a member of the Halifax Authors' Circle

He lived at Kilnhurst. There is a blue plaque in his honour at the house.

He married twice.

In 1920, he married (1) Florence Silman.

Children:

child
child
child
Florence Dolores

In 1975, when he was 78, he married (2) Unknown.

His wife was a brewery heiress who had written to him about Trigger in Europe

The marriage lasted about 6 months before the couple divorced. He let his wife have the house and he moved into the barn with Trigger.

One of Billy's stories was that he became friends with Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, in Cambridge, in the 1920s. When the potential of penicillin was recognised during World War II, Fleming realised that he had given his original laboratory notes to Billy. Billy was able to return the notebooks to their place in the history of medicine.

In the 1930s, he started the British Mobile Libraries service, based in Manchester.

In 1949, he was voted Radio Personality of the Year.

Billy died in 1977 at the age of 80.

Trigger died on 14th May 1980. The animal was buried along the lane from Kilnhurst