Holmes was born in Sheffield, England and educated at Woodhouse Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1948.
[2] Holmes argued that the Whig/Tory division that was present during William III's reign crystallised into a more rigid two-party polarisation after 1702.
[2] MPs struggled over political principles as well as for places, with the Queen's desire for coalition government largely frustrated except when the strength of the two parties was evenly balanced.
[4] Henry Horwitz claimed that Holmes replaced Walcott's work with "a bold yet subtle analysis that puts Augustan politics in truer perspective than ever before".
[5] Austin Woolrych said of British Politics in the Age of Anne: No work of history in our time has won its author a more instant reputation, or more decisively influenced the interpretation of the subject it treats.