In her career as a novelist and journalist, Elspeth Barker wrote for The Independent, The Observer (London), The Sunday Times (London), London Review of Books, and many others. Elspeth also taught Latin at what she described as a naughty girls' school on the Norfolk coast and worked as a tutor and lecturer in creative writing at the Norwich School of Art and Design. She published her first novel, O Caledonia, at the age of fifty-one. O Caledonia was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Elspeth was married to the poet George Barker and she died in 2022.
