Richard William Barber (born 30 October 1941) is a British historian who has published several books about medieval history and literature. His book The Knight and Chivalry, about the interplay between history and literature, won the Somerset Maugham Award, a well-known British literary prize, in 1971. A similarly-themed 2004 book, The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief, was widely praised in the UK press, and received major reviews in The New York Times and The New Republic.

Life

Barber was educated at Marlborough College, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1969 he founded The Boydell Press, which later became Boydell & Brewer Ltd, a publisher in medieval studies, and acted as group managing director until 2009. In 1989, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, in association with the University of Rochester, started the University of Rochester Press in upstate New York. In 2016, the directors of Boydell & Brewer Ltd transferred the company into a trust for the benefit of the employees. He was visiting professor in the History department at the University of York from 2013 to 2016, and was awarded an honorary doctorate there in 2015. Barber has long specialised in Arthurian legend, beginning with the general survey, Arthur of Albion (1961). His other major interest is historical biography: he has published Henry Plantagenet (1964) and a biography of Edward, the Black Prince, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine (1978). Recent biographical books are Edward III and the Triumph of England: The Battle of Crécy and the Order of the Garter (2013), which includes a reappraisal of the origins of the Order, and Henry II in the Penguin Monarchs series (2015). His latest book is Magnificence and Princely Splendour in the Middle Ages (2020).

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Collaborations