Barry Turner (author)
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Barry Turner | |
|---|---|
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| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | writer, editor |
| Years active | 1970–present |
Barry Turner is a British writer and editor.
Turner started his career as a teacher before turning to journalism with The Observer and making many appearances on radio and television. His first book, a study of British politics in the early Twentieth Century, was published in 1970. While writing and presenting documentary series for Thames Television, Yorkshire and Granada Television, he co-authored Adventures in Education and wrote Equality for Some, a history of girls' education. In 1972, he wrote A Place in the Country, a bestseller about life in the great country houses which inspired a television series.
In the mid-1970s, Barry joined Macmillan to develop a general non-fiction list before turning to marketing as a director of the academic press responsible for world sales. Returning to full-time writing in the early 1980s, he produced a wide range of work from theatrical biographies to a political and economic study of the five Nordic countries, The Other European Community. The story of ten thousand refugee children who escaped to Britain from Nazi Germany, ... And the Policeman Smiled, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 1990. For many years he wrote on travel for The Times and reviewed and serialised books for the paper. He reviews classic crime novels for the Daily Mail.
As founding editor of The Writer’s Handbook he took this annual reference title through to its twenty-fourth (final) edition. He was editor of The Statesman's Yearbook from 1997 to 2014.
His other work includes When Daddy Came Home, how family life changed forever in 1945 (published by Hutchinson]); One Small Suitcase, an adaptation of ... And the Policeman Smiled for younger readers (Puffin Books) and Countdown to Victory, the story of the final European campaigns of World War II (Hodder & Stoughton). His book, on the Suez Crisis, Suez 1956: The Inside Story of the First Oil War was published by Hodder in 2006 and Outpost of Occupation, about the war experiences of the Channel Islands, was published in early 2010 by Aurum Press. Latest books are Beacon for Change: How the 1951 Festival of Britain Shaped the Modern Age (Aurum, 2011), The Victorian Parson (Amberley Publishing, 2015) and Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich (Icon Books, 2015). He is a founder member and former chairman of the National Academy of Writing.
