Paul Barker (writer)

Paul Barker(24 August 1935 – 20 July 2019) was an English journalist and writer.

Barker was born in theWest Riding of Yorkshire.He grew up inMytholmroydandHebden Bridge.He was educated at local schools in theCalder Valleyand won anExhibition (scholarship)toBrasenose College, Oxford,to read French. Before taking up his place at Oxford, he didnational serviceand was commissioned as an officer in theIntelligence Corps,and while in the Army studiedRussian languageatCambridge Universityin theJoint Services School for LinguistswithDennis Potterin the next hut and Potter's producerKenith Troddin the same hut as Barker.

After taking his Oxford degree, he then went on to theÉcole Normale Supérieurein Paris for a year aslecteur.He joined the London staff ofThe Timesin 1959, but early in 1964 left to join the recently foundedNew Societyas a staff writer. He went on toThe Economist,but returned toNew Societyalmost at once – in 1965 – as deputy editor. In 1968 he succeededTimothy Raison,the first editor ofNew Society,and edited the magazine until 1986. Subsequently, he was a columnist forThe Sunday Timesand a regular writer for the LondonEvening Standard,The Times Literary SupplementandProspectmagazine. He was awarded a research fellowship by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 for his work on suburbia which laid the foundation for his book;The Freedoms of Suburbia(Frances Lincoln, 2009). Barker wrote onMichael Young's legacy inThe Rise and Rise of Meritocracy,edited by Young FellowGeoff Dench(Blackwell, 2006). He was a senior research fellow with the Young Foundation, as well as being a freelance journalist, broadcaster and author.

Barker died on 20 July 2019, aged 83.

Notable works

Non-Plan: An Experiment in Freedom

One of Paul Barker's most significant and controversial contributions toNew Societyduring the 1960s concerned issues around physical planning and space. In 1969 Barker collaborated withReyner Banham,Peter HallandCedric Priceon the article "Non-Plan: an experiment in freedom", which he published inNew Society.Kazys Varnelis gives the background to this article:

'Between 1967 and 1969, theNew Society’sdeputy editor Paul Barker developed a deliberately controversial project for the magazine involving Banham, Cedric Price, and Peter Hall. In 1967, Barker ran excerpts from Herbert Gans'sThe Levittowners: Ways of Life and Poetics in a New Suburban Community,which he saw "as a corrective to the usual we-know-best snobberies about suburbia." At roughly the same time, Barker and Hall "floated this maverick thought: could things be any worse if there was no planning at all?" Barker elaborates: "We were especially concerned at the attempt to impose aesthetic choices on people who might have very different choices of their own. Why not, we wondered, suggest an experiment in getting along without planning and seeing what emerged?" The project, titled "Non-Plan: An Experiment in Freedom", Barker notes, "was strongly influenced by Banham’s essays in the magazine". For the special issue, which would be published on 20 March 1969, Barker recalls, "We wanted to startle people by offending against the deepest taboos. This would drive our point home." To this end Hall, Banham, and Price each took a section of the revered British countryside and imagined it blanketed with a low-density sprawl driven by automobility. According to Barker the reaction was a "mixture of deep outrage and stunned silence."

Images of neon signs—the 'imageability' so important to Banham’s idea of une architecture autre—that would mark the commercial structures of non-plan punctuated the issue. In Banham’s contribution, "Spontaneity and Space", he suggested that "the monuments of our century that have spontaneity and vitality are found not in the old cities, but in the American West. There, in the desert and the Pacific states, creations like Fremont Street in Las Vegas or Sunset Strip in Beverly Hills represent the living architecture of our age. As Tom Wolfe points out in his brilliant essay on Las Vegas, they achieve their quality by replacing buildings by signs." '

from Kazys Varnelis, Psychogeography and the End of Planning. Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles. The Architecture of Four Ecologies in Pat Morton, (ed),Pop Culture and Postwar American Taste,(London: Blackwell, forthcoming 2006)

The Freedoms of Suburbia

In late 2009, Barker's book on suburbia was published. The book was extensively reviewed, including inThe Times Literary Supplement,Guardian,Daily Telegraph,Independent,Financial TimesandThe Economist.

Bibliography

• Paul Barker, withReyner Banham,Peter HallandCedric Price'Non-Plan: an experiment in freedom' New Society 338, (20 March 1969)
• Paul Barker (ed) (1972)One for Sorrow, Two for Joy: Ten Years of "New Society",Allen and Unwin,ISBN0-04-300041-X
• Paul Barker (ed) (1977)Arts in Society(reprint: 2006, Five Leaves Publications,ISBN1-905512-07-4)
• Paul BarkerNon-plan revisited: or the real way cities grow. The tenth Reyner Banham memorial lectureJournal of Design History12, 2 (1999)
• Jonathan Hughes andSimon Sadler,eds.,Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism,Oxford: Architectural Press, 2000[1]
• Paul Barker (2009)The Freedoms of SuburbiaFrances LincolnISBN0-7112-2978-3
• Paul Barker (2012)Hebden Bridge: A Sense of BelongingFrances LincolnISBN978-0711232150
• Paul Barker (2013)A Crooked SmileThe Grainwater PressISBN9781783011209(ebook)
• Paul Barker (2014)The Dead don't dieThe Grainwater PressISBN9781783014132(ebook)

External links

• The Papers of Paul Barkerat theChurchill Archives Centre
• Paul Barker Obituary, The Guardian