Lynn Barber

As I'm pretty much Lynn Barber's age, as I used to enjoy her interviews in the Observer, and as we both lived our pre-university lives in London, I thought this would be a book to savour.

Well, I dunno really. I whisked through it: it's a quick and easy read. Her teenage years were very different from my own, but after she'd described her childhood and That Teenage Adventure, the book settled down into giving a resume of her career. We learn little of Lynn the wife, Lynn the mother, Lynn the friend or neighbour, and all the other characters in the book, however central to her life, remain hazy. This book is about Lynn the journalist and author. Which is fine, but I wasn't particularly engaged.

Still, it's a short book, and soon over.

One for the charity shop pile.… (mere)

Breezy, approachable overview of popular biology and biologists in the mid-19th century. Barber identifies the craze for natural history amongst the public, and blames its demise on the professionalisation and specialisation of science, plus the challenge to religion raised by Darwinism. I'm not sure I buy the thesis completely, but the book has excellent one-chapter summaries of figures like Gosse, Owen, and Miller – the latter an enormously influential self-made geologist now totally obscure.… (mere)

I’d already seen and liked the film adaptation of An Education, but was interested to find out that the episode focused on by the film (Lynne Barber’s teenage affair with a middle-aged con man and the strange way her parents encouraged the relationship) is only one chapter of the book. Her childhood, her career as a writer, her time at Oxford University and her relationship with her husband are also covered, all in a very witty style. What makes the book so entertaining is Lynne Barber’s personality, her writing voice, and her insight into people, which also made her such a successful interviewer. One thing I found interesting is that she dislikes her speaking voice, the elocution-lesson accent she acquired in childhood and her tendency to waffle, and feels that her writing expresses her true self far better. She is definitely very honest, both about herself and about her opinions of other people. If an author is completely candid, it makes an autobiography much more compelling, and An Education is definitely the kind of page-turner you can read in one sitting. [2011]… (mere)