Pat Barker

Pat Barker

Pat Barker. He was born in Thornaby-on-Tees, in Yorkshire, England, on May 8, 1943. He studied at the London School of Economics, where he received his BA in International History, and at the University of Durham. He taught history and politics until 1982. Barker began writing at age 20, and was encouraged in her career by novelist Angela Carter. His first novels deal with the hard lives of working-class women in the north of England. In 1983 she was named one of the Top 20 British Young Novelists by the Book Marketing Council and Granta magazine. His trilogy of World War I novels, which began with Regeneration in 1991, was inspired in part by the experiences of his grandfather, who fought in the trenches of France. Regeneration was made into a 1997 film, starring Jonathan Pryce and James Wilby. The Eye in the Door (1993), the second novel in the trilogy, won the Guardian Fiction Award and The Ghost Road (1995), the last novel in the series, won the Booker Award for fiction. Pat Barker was awarded a CBE in 2000. Her latest novels are Class Life (2007), Toby's Room (2012) and The Silence of Girls (2018).