Julian Barnes
born Jan. 19, 1946, Leicester, Eng.
British television critic and author of
inventive and intellectual novels about
obsessed characters curious about the past.
Barnes attended Magdalen College, Oxford
(B.A., 1968), and began contributing reviews
to the Times Literary Supplement in the
1970s while publishing thrillers under his
Kavanagh pseudonym. These books—which
include Duffy (1980), Fiddle City (1981),
Putting the Boot In (1985), and Going to the
Dogs (1987)—feature a man named Duffy, a
bisexual ex-cop turned private detective.
The first novel published under Barnes’s
own name was the coming-of-age story
Metroland (1980). Jealous obsession moves
the protagonist of Before She Met Me (1982)
to scrutinize his new wife’s past.
Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) is a humorous
mixture of biography, fiction, and literary
criticism as a scholar becomes obsessed with
Flaubert and with the stuffed parrot that
Flaubert used as inspiration in writing the
short story “Un Coeur simple.” Barnes’s
later novels include A History of the World
in 101/2 Chapters (1989), Talking It Over
(1991), The Porcupine (1992), and Cross
Channel (1996). In the satirical England,
England (1998), Barnes skewers modern
England in his portrayal of a theme park on
the Isle of Wight, complete with the royal
family, the Tower of London, Robin Hood, and
pubs. Critics thought Barnes showed a new
depth of emotion in The Lemon Table (2004),
a collection of short stories in which most
of the characters are consumed by thoughts
of death. He explored why some people are
remembered after their death and others are
not in the historical novel Arthur & George
(2006), in which one of the title characters
is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Barnes’s nonfiction work includes a
collection of essays about France and French
culture, Something to Declare (2002), as
well as The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003),
which explores his love of food. His memoir
Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) is an
honest, oftentimes jarringly critical look
at his relationship with his parents and
older brother.
