Draft:Kent Barker

Kent Barker is a UK journalist, broadcaster, writer and historian. He was born in London in 1953. His father was Felix Barker (qv) and grandfather Anthony Raine Barker (qv). He attended Carn Brea and Felsted schools. At 16 he was an English Speaking Union exchange scholar to the Choate School in Connecticut. He attended the sixth form at Crown Woods school in Eltham.

During 1973 he lived in Los Angeles working for college radio station KOXY and was a correspondent for LBC/IRN. In 1974 he was a freelance radio reporter in London for the BBC World Service, Capital Radio and LBC for whom he also presented a classical music programme.

Kent Barker was a staff reporter at Radio Tees 1975-7 and a then, during 1978, a journalist with North East News services and a freelance reporter for BBC Radios Cleveland and Newcastle and Metro Radio. That year he returned to London from the North East and became a full time reporter on BBC Radio 4’s World at One and PM programmes. He was later attached to Radio News and the BBC Political Unit before, in 1987, moving to New York as radio correspondent for the BBC.

On his return to England in 1989 he joined ITN as a freelance reporter and producer, working mainly for Channel Four News but also across the ITN bulletins. He later became Social Affairs and then Home Affairs Correspondent for Channel Four News. In the 1990s he formed a TV production company, Kent Barker Productions (KBP) and over the next 20 years made features and documentaries for BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Channel Five strands, including Dispatches and First Sight, and various French TV channels. He also made features for BBC Radio, particularly You and Yours.

He has written for various magazines and newspapers, including the Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, Independent and The New Statesman. He was a weekly columnist for the Kent and Sussex Courier and the Times of Tunbridge Wells. He is a section editor and writer on the Hastings Independent newspaper. He has written a number of books, including novels “Revolution! Cuba’58” and “Hastings Waves”; a history: “The Smuggling Life of Gabriel Tomkins” and a biography of John Collier (1685-1760) – “Mister Hastings”. Kent Barker lives in Benenden in Kent. He served on the Parish Council, is a trustee of the Benenden Village Trust and, for a number of years, managed a local community orchard.

He was married and divorced, first to Sally Hughes and then to Celia Ellacott. He had a son by his first marriage, Titus Barker, born 1996.