Anthony John Holland (18 January 1940 – 28 November 2007) was a British screenwriter and actor, best known as a writer and co-creator (with Julia Smith) of the BBC soap opera EastEnders. Early life Holland was the oldest of three children born to John and Pat Holland, with his younger twin brothers Allan and Bryn. As a military family, Holland moved around with the postings assigned to his father and spent time in Aldershot, Gravesend and Chelmsford. Early career Holland began his career as an actor, appearing in the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Savages and later Message for Posterity, a 1967 serial for The Wednesday Play. In the latter year, a play Holland had developed - The Isle is Full of Noises - was taken up by the BBC and produced by Thirty-Minute Theatre; it was from there that Holland turned to script-writing. Through his agent, Holland landed a job as a writer and script editor on Z-Cars in 1970. It was here that he met producer and director Julia Smith, and started a long and successful working relationship with her. Holland and Smith became an established producer/script-editor team during their time on Z-Cars and went on to work for the BBC's hospital drama, Angels. It was during their time on Angels that the format of the programme was changed from weekly 50 minute-long episodes to a bi-weekly half-hour serial, with the further possibility of the show being aired all year round. EastEnders In 1983, the BBC approached Holland and Smith to produce a new programme for their channel, a bi-weekly soap-opera that would rival the long-established ITV favourites, Coronation Street, Crossroads and Emmerdale Farm. The BBC wanted this new serial to reflect 'London, today!' and together, Smith and Holland came up with the idea of a programme set in a Victorian square within the East End of London, focusing on its close working-class families and eccentric Cockney inhabitants. Thus, EastEnders was born. Holland and Smith wanted the primary focus of EastEnders to be a large extended family, representative of the type most typically found in the East End of London. Holland was from a large London family himself, and in creating some of the series' characters, he was able to use some of his own experiences as inspiration for the central EastEnders clan the Beales and the Fowlers. In creating the stories and characters, Holland delved into family