Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English essayist, novelist, and short story writer. After finishing his education, Barnes worked for three years as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement. His first work of fiction, Metroland, was published in 1980, and his second, Before She Met Me, was published two years later. Flaubert's Parrot was shortlisted for the 1984 Booker Prize, was a finalist for the 1988 Grinzane Cavour Prize, and won both the 1985 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the 1986 Prix Médicis Essai. Barnes published Staring at the Sun and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters later the same decade.
In 1991, Talking It Over was published and won the 1992 Prix Femina étranger. Nine years later, a sequel titled Love, etc was released. Between these two books, the short story collection Cross Channel and two longer works—The Porcupine and England, England—were published. Arthur & George was shortlisted for both the 2005 Booker Prize and the 2007 Dublin Literary Award, while The Sense of an Ending won the Booker Prize in 2011. Two additional short story collections—The Lemon Table and Pulse—were published in 2004 and 2011, respectively.
Among Barnes’s later works of fiction were The Noise of Time, The Only Story, and Elizabeth Finch. To mark his 80th birthday in January 2026, he published Departure(s), stating it would be his final book. In addition to his fictional works, he wrote four crime fiction books under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. He also published several essay collections, two memoirs, and the nonfiction book The Man in the Red Coat, which discusses people in Belle Époque Paris involved in the arts. He translated In the Land of Pain from French into English.
Barnes was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995, and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. His other honors include the 1986 E. M. Forster Award, the 1993 Shakespeare Prize, the 2004 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the 2016 Siegfried Lenz Prize, and the 2021 Jerusalem Prize. He has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Early life
Barnes was born in Leicester, England, on January 19, 1946. His family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks later. He is the younger brother of philosopher Jonathan Barnes. Both of his parents were French teachers. Barnes said his support for Leicester City Football Club, which began when he was four or five years old, was a way to stay connected to his home city. When he was 10 years old, his mother told him he had "too much imagination."
In 1956, the family moved to Northwood, Middlesex, the "Metro-land" of his first novel. He attended the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. Afterward, he studied modern languages at Magdalen College, Oxford. After graduating, he worked for three years as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement, focusing on "sports and dirty words." He later worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. While at the New Statesman, he experienced very difficult shyness. He described feeling "paralyzed into silence" during weekly meetings and being seen as the quietest member of the staff. From 1979 to 1986, he worked as a television critic, starting with the New Statesman and continuing with The Observer.
Writing
Julian Barnes works on an IBM 196C electric typewriter in his study, which has a large desk with three sides. He had to replace his old typewriter in 2023 because no one in Britain could fix it. A person from Hungary wrote to him with news about an unused but working IBM 196C typewriter that could be used instead.
Barnes's first novel, Metroland, was published in 1980. It tells the story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris, France, and later returns to London. The book explores themes like idealism and staying faithful in relationships. It has a three-part structure that appears often in Barnes's writing. After reading the book, Barnes's mother said she was upset by the book's "overload" of inappropriate content.
His second novel, Before She Met Me (1982), is a darker story about a jealous historian who seeks revenge by focusing on the past of his second wife. Barnes's breakthrough novel, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), broke from his earlier writing style. It tells the story of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who becomes obsessed with the life of Gustave Flaubert. Barnes once said, "Flaubert is the writer whose words I most carefully consider, who I think has spoken the most truth about writing." Flaubert's Parrot was well-received, especially in France, and helped make Barnes a respected literary figure. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, was a finalist for the 1988 Grinzane Cavour Prize, and won the 1985 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the 1986 Prix Médicis Essai. His publisher later gave him one of Flaubert's original letters after Barnes sold over one million copies of all his books. While researching Flaubert's Parrot, Barnes discovered a notebook by Alphonse Daudet in Oxford's Taylorian library. He later translated and edited it, and it was published in 2002 as In the Land of Pain.
In 1986, Barnes published Staring at the Sun, a novel about a woman growing up in postwar England and dealing with love, truth, and death. In 1989, he published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, a nonlinear novel that uses different writing styles to challenge ideas about human history and knowledge.
In 1991, Barnes published Talking It Over, a novel about a modern love triangle where three characters take turns speaking to the reader about shared events. A sequel, Love, etc, revisited the characters ten years later and was published in 2000. Between the two books, he published The Porcupine (1992), which deals with a historical theme about the trial of Stoyo Petkanov, a former leader of a collapsed Communist country in Eastern Europe. In 1998, Barnes wrote England, England, a humorous novel that explores national identity through the story of an entrepreneur who creates a theme park on the Isle of Wight that mimics England's tourist attractions. The book included a reference to the UK leaving the European Union, which Barnes was later asked about after Brexit. Barnes, who loves France, also published Cross Channel, a collection of 10 stories about Britain's relationship with France. He returned to the topic of France in Something to Declare, a collection of essays on French subjects published in 2002.
In 2003, Barnes took on a rare acting role as the voice of Georges Simenon in a BBC Radio 4 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories. In 2005, he published Arthur & George, a fictional account of a true crime investigated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The book was shortlisted for the 2007 Dublin Literary Award.
Barnes's 11th novel, The Sense of an Ending, was published by Jonathan Cape on August 4, 2011. In October of that year, it won the Booker Prize. The judges took 31 minutes to decide, with head judge Stella Rimington calling it a "beautifully written book" that "spoke to humankind in the 21st Century." Barnes attended the ceremony but avoided publicity about the prize, as he had previously said, "The only sensible attitude to the Booker is to treat it as posh bingo." His comment, made in 1987, was still remembered years later. The Sense of an Ending also won the 2012 Europese Literatuurprijs and was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Book Awards.
In 2013, Barnes published Levels of Life, divided into three sections. The first section describes the history of early ballooning and aerial photography, focusing on Gaspard-Félix Tournachon. The second part is a short story about Fred Burnaby and the French actor Sarah Bernhardt, both balloonists. The third part is an essay about Barnes's grief over the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh (who is not named). Blake Morrison of The Guardian wrote that the third section's power comes from what it does not say, as well as what it does, and from the love inferred from the grief described.
In 2016, Barnes published The Noise of Time, a historical novel about a fictional version of composer Dmitry Shostakovich. This was followed by The Only Story (2018), which reflects on a man's relationship with an older woman. Elizabeth Finch (2022) features a woman who becomes the subject of newspaper attention after an LRB lecture. Some reviewers found the setup of British tabloid interest in academia unlikely, but Barnes noted the "disgusting" treatment of historical novelist Hilary Mantel after she spoke about the British royal family at the British Museum in 2013 and wrote about it for the London Review of Books. Barnes said the outline of Finch's experience came "virtually word for word, picture for picture" from the Daily Mail's coverage. Mantel died later that year.
In 2025, Barnes published Changing My Mind, a collection of essays in which he questions whether the Self can change the mind, arguing instead that the mind changes our identity. The essays also discuss memory, building on his brother's idea that memory is "an act of the imagination." Barnes explains that people may remember things that never happened, greatly exaggerate events, or take details from others' memories, changing not just the endings but also the middles and beginnings of their life stories. He says memory changes over time and, in turn, changes our mind.
On January 20, 2026—the day after Barnes's 80th birthday—Departure(s) was released in the UK. Barnes declared it his final book to be published.
Personal life
Barnes has lived in Tufnell Park, north London, since 1983. He describes himself as an agnostic, who is "probably an atheist."
He married his first wife, Pat Kavanagh (a literary agent), in 1979. She suffered from a brain tumor and passed away on 20 October 2008. Barnes wrote about his sadness over her death in an essay included in his 2013 book, Levels of Life.
In 2013, he gave a rare interview to The New Statesmen for its Centenary Issue. During the interview, he criticized the British government for closing many public libraries and for the UK’s decline in global literacy rankings. He also expressed concern about the government’s focus on the market, which he compared to a belief system, and the growing gap between wealthy and poor people. He shared his views on several British prime ministers: Gordon Brown, "a relief after the previous leader"; James Callaghan, "a change from the previous leader"; and John Major, whom he supported until he sold off the railways, for which he wished "he be boiled in oil throughout eternity."
In 2020, Barnes experienced a health issue that he initially did not discuss publicly. Later, he revealed he was being treated for a rare type of blood cancer diagnosed in 2020. The treatment involves chemotherapy to manage the condition for the rest of his life. He supports the human rights organization Freedom from Torture, having helped fundraise for it, and Dignity in Dying, a group advocating for assisted dying.
After eight years of being in a relationship, Barnes secretly married his second wife, Rachel Cugnoni, in August 2025. He did not publicly announce the marriage until shortly before his 80th birthday the following year.
Works
In the 1980s, after marrying his first wife, Pat Kavanagh, who worked as a literary agent, Barnes wrote four crime fiction books using the name "Dan Kavanagh." These books featured a character named Duffy, a former police detective who became a security advisor. Duffy is one of Britain's earliest bisexual male detectives in fiction. Barnes explained that using a fake name allowed him to write without limits, including exploring thoughts about violence. His first novel, Metroland, published in 1980, took eight years to complete. However, the books featuring Duffy and other works under the Kavanagh name usually took less than two weeks to write. This was an experiment to see how quickly he could write while focusing intensely.