Noel Barber

Noel Barber (9 September 1909 – 10 July 1988) was a British novelist and journalist. Many of his novels, considered exotic, are about his experiences as leading foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail. He had two brothers: Kenneth, a banker, and Anthony Barber, Baron Barber.

Most notably he reported from Morocco, where he was stabbed five times. In October 1956, Barber survived a gunshot wound to the head by a Soviet sentry in Hungary during the Hungarian revolution. A car crash ended his career as journalist. He then began writing novels: he became a best selling novelist in his seventies with his first novel, Tanamera.

Novels

• Tanamera: A Novel of Singapore (1981)
• A Farewell to France (1983)
• A Woman of Cairo (1984) Published in the USA as Sakkara (1985)
• The Other Side of Paradise (1986)
• The Weeping and the Laughter (1988)
• The Daughters of the Prince (1990)

Non fiction

• Cities (1951) (with Rupert Croft-Cooke)
• Fires of Spring (1952)
• Strangers in the Sun (1955)
• A Handful of Ashes: A Personal Testament of the Battle of Budapest (1957)
• The White Desert (1958)
• Distant Places (1959)
• The Flight of the Dalai Lama (1960)
• Life with Titina (1961)
• Adventures At Both Poles (1963)
• Conversations with Painters (1964)
• The Black Hole of Calcutta (1965)
• Let's Visit the USA (1967)
• Sinister Twilight: The Fall And Rise Again of Singapore (1968)
• From the Land of Lost Content (1969)
• The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948-60 (1971)
• The Sultans (1973)
• Lords of the Golden Horn: From Suleiman the Magnificent to Kamal Ataturk (1973)
• Seven Days of Freedom: Hungarian Uprising, 1956 (1974)
• The Week France Fell: June 10–16, 1940 (1976)
• The Natives Were Friendly So We Stayed the Night (1977)
• The Singapore Story (1978)
• Fall of Shanghai: Communist Takeover in 1949 (1979)

Adaptations

Tanamera was filmed as a television serial in 1989 as Tanamera – Lion of Singapore.

The Other Side of Paradise was filmed for TV in 1992 as The Other Side of Paradise.