Biography

Pat Barker

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She was born in Thornaby, near Stockton on Tees, and is now living in Durham City. Her first novel was Union Street, which was set in Teeside. In 1989, it was adapted as Stanley and Iris, starring Jane Fonda and Robert de Niro, and set in America. Her novel Regeneration about the first World War was filmed under that title in 1996, starring Jonathan Pryce and James Wilby. She won the Booker Prize in 1995.
- IMDb mini biography by: tonyman 5

She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Millennium Honors List for her services to Literature.
An author in London SW10, England
Her book 'Regeneration' about the first World War was inspired by her grandfathers experiences and got great acclaim on both here and in America. and was nominated by the New York Times as 1 of the 4 Best Books of the Year - the only novel by a British author to be so honoured,.
Her husband is a retired professor of zoology and they have 2 children.
Born in Thornaby on Tees she later lived in the Dovecote Street area of Stockton and now lives in the Durham city area.

I think the whole British psyche is suffering from the contradiction you see in Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, where the war is both terrible and never to be repeated and at the same time experiences derived from it are given enormous value. No one watches war films in quite the way the British do.
I think there is a lot to be said for writing about history, because you can sometimes deal with contemporary dilemmas in a way people are more open to because it is presented in this unfamiliar guise, they don't automatically know what they think about it, whereas if you are writing about a contemporary issue on the nose, sometimes all you do is activate people's prejudices. I think the historical novel can be a backdoor into the present which is very valuable.
[interview, 1992] I was strongly typecast as a northern, regional, working class, feminist "label, label, label" novelist. It's not a matter so much of objecting to the labels, but you do get to a point where people are reading the labels instead of the book. And I felt I'd got to that point.

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