• ©
  • David Barker

Biography

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Critical perspective

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Bibliography

Confessions of a Catastrophist
The Dead Eight
A Good Day For A Dog
My Father's Watch: The Story of a Child Prisoner in 70s Britain
Henry and Harriet: And Other Plays
The Siege of Derry
The Bull Raid
August '44
10 Rounds
Caught on a Train
Father and I: a memoir
Dance of Death
The Base
Frozen Out
How to Murder a Man
W9 and Other Lives
The Cure
Life of a Drum
The Witch That Wasn't
The Glass Curtain: inside an Ulster community
Malachy and his Family
The TV Genie
Driving through Cuba: an east-west journey
Work and Play
August in July
The Eleventh Summer

Awards

2003
Bisto Prize (Ireland)
2002
Ewart-Biggs Prize
2001
Bisto Prize (Ireland)

Author statement

As a child I loved to read and to be read to.  I loved the tranced feeling that came when I got lost in a story.  I still look for that when I read now I am an adult (though I don’t always find it) and I also seek to give that feeling to my readers, whether they’re adults or children.  I regard myself primarily as a storyteller who tells tales – whether true or made up or appropriated from folk-lore (I’m not fussy).  My primary ambition is to give readers imaginary worlds in which they can lose themselves (and of course these worlds needn’t necessarily be friendly or benign). And if what I write does more for the reader than give this momentary pleasure, well, that’s a lovely bonus.