Julian Barnes

Early life

Barnes was born in Leicester, although his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks afterwards. Both of his parents were teachers of French. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination". In 1956 the family moved to Northwood, Middlesex, the 'Metroland' of his first novel. He then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. During his time at the New Statesman, Barnes suffered from debilitating shyness, saying: "When there were weekly meetings I would be paralysed into silence, and was thought of as the mute member of staff". From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer.

Career

His first novel, Metroland (1980), is the story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris as a student, finally returning to London. The novel deals with themes of idealism and sexual fidelity, and has the three-part structure that is a common recurrence in Barnes' work. After reading the novel, Barnes' mother complained about the book's "bombardment" of filth. His second novel Before She Met Me (1982) features a darker narrative, a story of revenge by a jealous historian who becomes obsessed by his second wife's past. Barnes's breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot (1984) departed from the traditional linear structure of his previous novels and featured a fragmentary biographical style story of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. In reference to Flaubert, Barnes has said, "he’s the writer whose words I most carefully tend to weigh, who I think has spoken the most truth about writing.". Flaubert's Parrot was published to great acclaim, especially in France, and it helped established Barnes as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation.

Staring at the Sun followed in 1986, another ambitious novel about a woman growing to maturity in post-war England who deals with issues of love, truth and mortality. In 1989 Barnes published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, which was also a non-linear novel, which uses a variety of writing styles to call into question the perceived notions of human history and knowledge itself.

In 1991, he published Talking It Over, a contemporary love triangle, in which the three characters take turns to talk to the reader, reflecting over common events. This was followed by a sequel, Love, etc (2000), which revisited the characters ten years on. Barnes's novel The Porcupine (1992) again deals with a historical theme as it depicts the trial of the former leader of a collapsed Communist country in Eastern Europe, Stoyo Petkanov, as he stands trial for crimes against his country. England, England is a humorous novel that explores the idea of national identity as the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman creates a theme park on the Isle of Wight that duplicates the tourist spots of England.

Arthur & George (2005), a fictional account of a true crime that was investigated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, launched Barnes's career into the more popular mainstream. It was the first of his novels to be featured on the New York Times bestsellers list for Hardback Fiction.

Barnes is a keen Francophile, and his 1996 book Cross Channel, is a collection of 10 stories charting Britain's relationship with France. He also returned to the topic of France in Something to Declare, a collection of essays on French subjects.

In 2003, Barnes undertook a rare acting role as the voice of Georges Simenon in a BBC Radio 4 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories.

Barnes' eleventh novel, The Sense of an Ending, published by Jonathan Cape, was released on 4 August 2011. In October of that year, the book was awarded the Man Booker Prize. The judges took 31 minutes to decide the winner and head judge, Stella Rimington, said The Sense of an Ending was a "beautifully written book" and the panel thought it "spoke to humankind in the 21st Century." The Sense of an Ending also won the Europese Literatuurprijs and was on the New York Times Bestseller list for several weeks.

In 2013 Barnes published Levels of Life. The first section of the work gives a history of early ballooning and aerial photography, describing the work of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon. The second part is a short story about Fred Burnaby and the French actor Sarah Bernhardt, both also balloonists. The third part is an essay discussing Barnes' grief over the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh (although she is not named): "You put together two people who have not been put together before . . . Sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed . . . I was thirty-two when we met, sixty-two when she died. The heart of my life; the life of my heart." In The Guardian, Blake Morrison said of the third section, "Its resonance comes from all it doesn't say, as well as what it does; from the depth of love we infer from the desert of grief."

In 2013, Barnes took on the British government over its "mass closure of public libraries", Britain's "slip down the world league table for literacy" and its "ideological worship of the market – as quasi-religious as nature-worship – and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor." He also used the word "farting" as a metaphor for selfishness.

Personal life

Barnes maintains a high level of privacy with regard to his personal life, though he is often very candid in interviews. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specialising in ancient philosophy. Julian Barnes is a patron of human rights organisation Freedom from Torture, for which he has sponsored several fundraising events, and Dignity in Dying, a campaign group for assisted dying. He lives in London.

Barnes is an atheist.

His wife Pat Kavanagh, who was a literary agent, died on 20 October 2008 of a brain tumour. Barnes wrote about his grief over his wife's death in an essay in his book Levels of Life.

Awards and honors

Novels

Collections

Non-fiction

Works as Dan Kavanagh