Duncan Barrett

Duncan Barrett
Born	Duncan Barrett (1983-01-01) January 1, 1983 London
Occupation	Writer and editor
Genres	Biography, Memoir
Notable work(s)	The Sugar Girls
www.thesugargirls.com

Duncan Barrett is a writer and editor who specialises in biography and memoir.^[1] He was born in Islington, London in 1983^[2] and went to City of London School from 1994 to 2001,^[3] before studying English at Jesus College, Cambridge,^[4] where he served as Film Editor of student newspaper Varsity.^[5] He is the author of Star Trek: The Human Frontier, co-written with his mother Michele Barrett and published by Polity Press in 2000.^[6] He edited Vitali Vitaliev’s travelogue Passport to Enclavia, published by Reportage Press in 2008.^[7]

Barrett was also the editor of Ronald Skirth’s pacifist First World War memoir The Reluctant Tommy, published by Macmillan in 2010.^[4] In it he wrote that, having come across Skirth’s memoir through his mother’s research, he felt determined that it should be read by a wide audience.^[8] The book was favourably reviewed by Richard Holmes in the Evening Standard^[9] and Jonathan Gibbs in the Financial Times,^[10] as well as receiving coverage in the Daily Mail,^[11] Socialist Worker^[12] and the Sunday Express.^[13] However, it came under attack from critics who objected to its pacifist politics and questioned its accuracy. In a revised introduction to the paperback edition (2011), Barrett defended the memoir, encouraging people to ‘read the book for yourself and make up your own mind who to believe'.^[14]

In 2012, Collins published The Sugar Girls,^[1] a book co-written by Barrett with Nuala Calvi, telling the stories of women workers at Tate & Lyle’s East End factories since the Second World War.^[15] It soon became a bestseller^[16] and was featured as the Daily Mail's 'Book of the Week' on 23rd March 2012.^[17] In an article for History Workshop Online, Barrett wrote that, while their methodology was indebted to oral history, the end result was a work of narrative non-fiction.^[18] The authors were inspired by Jennifer Worth’s Call the Midwife, which was their ‘touchstone’ as they wrote.^[19] The book is accompanied by a blog, where Barrett and Calvi discuss broader issues of life and work in the East End of London in the period covered by the book, as well as posting photographs and audio clips of the women they interviewed.^[20]

In 2013, Barrett and Calvi's second book together, GI Brides, was published by Harper, based on interviews with British women who married Americans during the Second World War.^[21] It was warmly reviewed by Bel Mooney in the Daily Mail^[22] and soon became a Sunday Times bestseller.^[23]

Barrett also works as an actor and theatre director. He trained at Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 2006.^[24] In 2007 he played John Walker in Eastern Angles’ production of Arthur Ransome’s We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and was praised for ‘neatly avoid[ing] any jolly hockeysticks’.^[25] In 2011 he was seen as W. T. Tutte in the BBC’s Code-breakers and in 2012 as Paul Winder in National Geographic's Locked up Abroad.^[26]

Barrett has often worked on the plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists. He is the director of the short film Exit Strategy (2010), adapted from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.^[27] He played Frederick in a production of Aphra Behn’s The Rover at the Edinburgh Fringe 2006.^[28] The previous year he played the title role in Shakespeare’s Richard II at the festival.^[29] In 2004, he directed All's Well That Ends Well at the festival, with a cast including Joe Thomas of The Inbetweeners.^[30]

Bibliography

Notes

References

• Barrett, Duncan; Skirth, Ronald (2011). The Reluctant Tommy (2011 ed.). Pan Macmillan Limited. ISBN 9780330513746.  - Total pages: 324

External links

• The Sugar Girls website