WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD
Elspeth Barker (1940-2022) wrote and published her first and only novel O Caledonia, at the age of 51. It was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.In her career as a journalist, Elspeth wrote for the Independent, Observer, Sunday Times, London Review of Books and others. For ten years in the 1980s Elspeth taught Latin at what she describes as a naughty girls' school on the Norfolk coast. Later, she worked as a lecturer in Creative Writing at the Norwich University of the Arts. She was married to the poet George Barker, with whom she had 5 children, they lived in rural Norfolk. After his death in 1991 she lived on there with numerous badly behaved animals and a home that welcomed everyone. Raffaella Barker has been writing novels since the age of 26, and has been a promiscuous reader all her life. She has written 9 novels and worked as a journalist for Country Life, The Sunday Times, Conde Nast Traveller and Harpers Bazaar. Raffaella lectured on the Creative Writing programme at the University of East Anglia, and continues to teach creative writing privately. The eldest of Elspeth and George Barker's 5 children, she has inherited their penchant for badly behaved animals and, about her home on the North Norfolk Coast, has said, 'The Norfolk landscape sends a shiver through my soul.'
This book is heaven. Elspeth Barker writes like no one else. -- Olivia Laing, author of CRUDO What a pleasure it was to read Notes from the Henhouse. An original voice, gothic, poetic and exuberantly funny. -- Esther Freud, author of HIDEOUS KINKY Elspeth Barker speaks her mind fearlessly, and her mind is scintillating. Witty, caustic, erudite - as fiercely funny in writing about heartbreak and mortality as she is about drunken dinner parties and delinquent dogs. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett A masterclass in the art of the personal essay. These pieces - about pigs, and loss, and the delicate balance between art and life - are vital, and funny, and true. Though memoir, they have a powerful ambiguity, like the very best short stories. -- Charlie Gilmour, author of FEATHERHOOD Elspeth Barker is magnificent, the most underrated British writer of the last century. I loved Notes from the Henhouse so much. Laugh-out-loud funny, sad and beautiful, these essays are a revelation, full of love and joy and life lessons (never go for a man who will intentionally step on a frog and be pragmatic about hens). I will read them again and again. -- Camilla Grudova, author of CHILDREN OF PARADISE
