Noel Barber (9 September 1909 – 10 July 1988)
was a British novelist and journalist. Many of his novels, set in exotic countries, are about his experiences as leading foreign correspondent for the ''
Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
''. He was the son of John Barber and his Danish wife, Musse, and had two brothers: Kenneth, a banker, and
Anthony Barber
Anthony Perrinott Lysberg Barber, Baron Barber, (4 July 1920 – 16 December 2005) was a British Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1970 to 1974.
After serving in both the Territorial Army and the Royal ...
, Baron Barber.
Most notably he reported from
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria ...
, where he was stabbed five times. In October 1956, Barber survived a gunshot wound to the head by a Soviet sentry in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...
during the
Hungarian revolution.
A car crash ended his career as journalist. He then began writing novels: he became a best-selling novelist in his seventies with his first novel, ''Tanamera''.
Novels
* ''Tanamera: A Novel of Singapore'' (1981)
* ''A Farewell to France'' (1983)
* ''A Woman of Cairo'' (1984) Published in the United States as ''Sakkara'' (1985)
* ''The Other Side of Paradise'' (1986)
* ''The Weeping and the Laughter'' (1988)
* ''The Daughters of the Prince'' (1990)
Non-fiction
* ''How Strong is Japan''? (1942)
*''How Strong is America?'' (1942)
*''Trans-Siberian'' (1942)
*''Prisoner of War'' (1944)
*''Cities'' (1951) (with
Rupert Croft-Cooke)
* ''Fires of Spring'' (1952)
* ''Strangers in the Sun'' (1955)
* ''A Handful of Ashes: A Personal Testament of the Battle of Budapest'' (1957)
* ''The White Desert'' (1958)
* ''Distant Places'' (1959)
* ''The Flight of the Dalai Lama'' (1960)
* ''Life with Titina'' (1961)
* ''Adventures At Both Poles'' (1963)
* ''Conversations with Painters'' (1964)
* ''The Black Hole of Calcutta'' (1965)
* ''Let's Visit the USA'' (1967)
* ''Sinister Twilight: The Fall And Rise Again of Singapore'' (1968)
* ''From the Land of Lost Content'' (1969)
* ''
The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60'' (1971)
* ''The Sultans'' (1973)
* ''Lords of the Golden Horn: From Suleiman the Magnificent to Kamal Ataturk'' (1973)
* ''Seven Days of Freedom: Hungarian Uprising, 1956'' (1974)
* ''The Week France Fell: June 10–16, 1940'' (1976)
* ''The Natives Were Friendly So We Stayed the Night'' (1977)
* ''The Singapore Story'' (1978)
* ''Fall of Shanghai: Communist Takeover in 1949'' (1979)
Adaptations
''Tanamera'' was filmed as a television serial in 1989 as ''
Tanamera – Lion of Singapore
''Tanamera – Lion of Singapore'' is a 1989 Australian drama serial which is a co-production between Central Independent television and Grundy in 1989.Australian Television and International Mediascapes By Stuart Cunningham P125 , 978052146974 ...
'', while ''The Other Side of Paradise'' was filmed for TV in 1992 as ''
The Other Side of Paradise''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barber, Noel
1909 births
1988 deaths
British reporters and correspondents
British expatriates in Hungary
British expatriates in Morocco
British shooting survivors
20th-century English novelists
British people of Danish descent