Pat Barker

Pat Barker was born in Thornaby-on-Tees in 1943 and was raised largely by her grandparents. She studied international history at the London School of Economics and later taught history and politics. Her early manuscripts faced repeated rejection before the writer Angela Carter encouraged her to pursue publication. Barker’s first novel, Union Street, appeared in 1982 and drew on working-class women’s lives in northern England.

Barker’s historical reputation was established by the Regeneration trilogy, which examines trauma, masculinity and medical authority during the First World War through fictional characters and historical figures including Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers. The final volume, The Ghost Road, won the Booker Prize. She later explored artists and soldiers in the Life Class novels and retold the Trojan War from women’s perspectives in The Silence of the Girls and its sequels. Barker is especially concerned with the body under pressure: wounded, controlled, observed or denied a public voice. Her work suits readers interested in shell shock, class and the gendered aftermath of war.