Background
Holst was born on 21 September, 1874 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the elder of the two children of Adolph von Holst, a professional musician, and his wife, Clara Cox, née Lediard.
She was of mostly British descent, daughter of a respected Cirencester solicitor; the Holst side of the family was of mixed Swedish, Latvian and German ancestry, with at least one professional musician in each of the previous three generations.
The von Holst family originally came from Sweden; the "von" was dropped during World War I.