Pat Barker
| Pat Barker | |
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| Born | Patricia Mary W. Drake 8 May 1943 Thornaby-on-Tees, Yorkshire |
| Occupation | novelist |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics |
| Subject | Memory, trauma, survival, recovery |
| Notable works | Regeneration Trilogy |
| Notable awards | Man Booker Prize, Guardian First Book Award |
| Children | Anna Ralph |
Patricia Mary W. "Pat" Barker CBE, FRSL (née Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, The Observer named the Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels".
Barker was born to a working-class family in Thornaby-on-Tees in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 8 May 1943. Her mother Moyra died in 2000, and her father's identity is unknown. According to The Times, Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while in the Wrens." In a social climate where illegitimacy was regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter. They lived with Barker's grandmother Alice and step-grandfather William, until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven. Barker could have joined her mother, she told The Guardian in 2003, but chose to stay with her grandmother "because of love of her, and because my stepfather didn't warm to me, nor me to him." Her grandparents ran a fish and chip shop which failed and the family was, she told The Times in 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living on National Assistance – 'on the pancrack', as my grandmother called it." At the age of eleven, Barker won a place at grammar school, attending King James Grammar School in Knaresborough and Grangefield Grammar School in Stockton-on-Tees.
Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at the London School of Economics from 1962-65. After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971.
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