Robert Holdstock was born in 1948 in Kent (East of the Medway). Part of his childhood was spent exploring the dense woods of the Kentish heartlands and also the bleak expanse of the Romney Marsh. He spent nine years as a full-time student, and holds a masters degree in Medical Zoology. In 1976 he became a full time writer. Currently, he lives in London. He received British Science Fiction Award, World Fantasy Award as well as Homer Award.

Holdstock is often interested in the nature of time. In one his early novel, Where Time Winds Blow (London: Pan Books, 1981, 1982) he pictures a planet where eerie time displacements, like winds, can dump alien artefacts from the past and future into now, or sweep things away from now into anywhen. A planet that attracts both scientists and fortune hunters, rummaging among the strangenesses, risking oblivion, carrying with them their own hang-ups, desperations, odd urges and searches.