Harold Holt - Early Life

Early Life

Harold Holt was the elder of Thomas and Olive (Williams) Holt's two children. He was born in the Sydney suburb of Stanmore on 5 August 1908. He and his brother Cliff (Clifford Thomas Holt, born 1910) spent their early life in Sydney and attended three different schools in Sydney and Adelaide between 1913 and 1919.

In 1921 Thomas Holt enrolled his sons at Wesley College in Melbourne, where the future Prime Minister Robert Menzies had been a star pupil. By this time Thomas Holt had left teaching and moved into theatrical and artist management in partnership with the noted entrepreneur Hugh D. McIntosh, owner of the Tivoli theatre circuit. For several years in the early 1930s he was based in London.

Harold Holt's parents divorced in 1918. His mother died in 1924, when he was sixteen, and he did not attend her funeral. A lack of parental affection, his parents' divorce and his mother's early death instilled deep feelings of loneliness and insecurity in the young Holt. This drove him to seek approval and acclaim through personal endeavour and career achievement, and fuelled his eagerness to please others and his need to be liked. A formative event was his singing performance at his school's annual Speech Night in December 1926 – none of his family were present, and the sense of loneliness he felt that night remained with him throughout his life.

Holt won a scholarship to Queen's College at the University of Melbourne and began his law degree in 1927. He excelled in many areas of university life – he won College 'Blues' for cricket and Australian rules football, as well as the College Oratory and Essay Prize. He was a member of the Melbourne Inter-University Debating team and the United Australia Organization 'A' Grade debating team, and was president of both the Sports and Social Club and the Law Students' Society.

While at university, Holt met Zara Kate Dickins, and they soon became lovers. However, the couple split up in 1934 and Zara travelled overseas. In London she met Captain James Fell, a British Army officer, and they married in March 1935. Her first son Nicholas was born in 1937, followed by twin boys Sam and Andrew, born in 1939. By this time, however, she had renewed her relationship with Holt and her marriage to Fell ended soon after the twins' birth. Tom Frame's biography reveals that Holt was the twins' biological father. Zara and Fell subsequently divorced, she married Holt in 1946 and he adopted the three boys. Although they remained married until Holt's death in 1967, Zara's memoirs confirmed longstanding rumours that Holt had a number of extramarital affairs.

Holt graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1930. He was admitted to the Victorian Bar in November 1932 and served his articles with the Melbourne firm of Fink, Best & Miller, but the Great Depression meant that he was unable to find work as a barrister. His father, based in London at the time, wanted him to further his studies in England, but the worsening economy also made this impossible.