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My Father and the Silver King

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He ran away from home in London’s East End when he was seven years old, living on the streets and joining a gang of child pickpockets. At nine he signed on as a “ship’s boy,” on a clipper ship sailing to South America, an experience so grim he vowed never to go to sea again. In a bicycle shop, where he found a job, he saw his first automobile. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for cars. By twelve years of age he became a chauffeur. When he saw The Silver King, a melodrama in which the wronged hero is redeemed after making a fortune in a silver mine in South America, he made up his mind he would become “The Silver King.” Like the hero of the play, this cockney lad, who would become the author’s father, left England and made a fortune in an unlikely business in Australia. Piecing his story together from childhood memories, family letters, contemporary accounts of London, shipboard life at the end of the 19th century, the Boer War, and the Queensland cane fields, the author has written a story about a man inspired by a dream of becoming a rich gentleman, a “Silver King.”

Recent Articles

“Joshua Barley (translator) Greek Folk Songs.” Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (forthcoming).

“Lament and Elegy in Modern Greek Literature,” In Journal of World Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 104–122. (Read Online)

“Greek Death Rituals and Laments,” In Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore (forthcoming 2022).

Obituary, Mikis Theodorakis. London The Guardian. (Read Online)

“Transgressing Musical Borders: Re(m)betika as Liminal Music.” In Borders and Borderers: Explorations in Identity, Exile and Translation (Durrell Studies 1), ed. Richard Pine and Vera Kondinari. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Three Poems published in Mediterranean Poetry. (Read Online)

One poem published in Anthology: Poems for the Year 2020, ed. Merryn Williams, Shoestring Press, UK.

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Recent Events

• March 24, 2026
  Belfast, United Kingdom.

• March 19, 2026 from 6:30 pm to 8 pm.
  Bush House North Wing, King’s College London, London, England.
  Gail Holst Warhaft and Anthony Hirst present GHW’s new book: My Father and the Silver King, in Bush House (NE) link

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Recent Awards

Honorary Membership of the Organization “Friends of Greek Music.” Presentation of the plaque during the event at the Megaron on September 27th 2023 by the President of the organization, Mr. Panos Dimaras.

Honored by the Academy of Athens for her work on Greek music and literature in November, 2023.

Recent Interviews

With iEidisis

With Monogramma

With online Greek journal lifo

Maria Farantouri Brings Songs Of Resistance To Carnegie Hall

For interviews and appearances, contact Gail Holst-Warhaft at

As well as being a poet, Gail Holst-Warhaft has been a journalist, broadcaster, prose-writer, academic, musician, and translator. She left Australia, in 1965 and moved to Greece. During the Greek dictatorship of 1967-74, she moved back to Australia, studying harpsichord and becoming a journalist. In the 1970’s, while researching a book on Greek music, she performed with Greece’s leading composers, including Mikis Theodorakis, Dionysis Savvopoulos, and Mariza Koch. Two books on Greek music followed. Later she began translating Modern Greek poetry and prose. Moving to Ithaca, New York, in 1980, she married, completed a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature and Classics and had a family. In the 1990’s, having joined the Institute for European Studies, Gail wrote two books on laments and grief and began publishing her own poetry. She founded a Mediterranean Studies Initiative and organized conferences, concerts and talks. On a trip to Greece in 2009, she became seriously concerned about the water crisis in many parts of the country. For the last eight years she has worked with faculty and students from a number of different departments to address water issues in the region.