Revel Barker

Posted: September 24, 2024

REVEL BARKER, former Sunday Mirror foreign editor and later Mirror Group managing editor, died on September 9 [2024], aged 79. He had been living on Gozo for some years, and there will be a memorial service for *Dr Anthony Revel Barker PhD FHRS at Our Lady of Loreto Parish Church in Ghajnsielem, Gozo, followed by a drink at Gleneagles Bar, Gozo on Saturday, September 28, at 4.30pm. The service will be streamed at 4.30pm by www.facebook.com/radjulauretana

His daughter Anna said: “Revel had been admitted to hospital after breaking both hips in falls earlier this year. My brother James and I were with him holding his hands. He was prepared, as always, for his journey ahead, neither of us realising the moment we were about to experience.

“Revel will be missed hugely by all his family and friends. He lived his life loving to write, a great journalist from his early days with the Yorkshire Evening Post through to the Daily Mirror and then Sunday Mirror, where he was foreign editor, and eventually rising to Mirror Group managing editor.

“After retiring from the UK and becoming a full time Gozitan resident, Revel wrote extensively online, with regular articles in the Times of Malta, and The Malta Independent, in addition to writing articles for his website Gentlemen Ranters [which he created]. He also wrote fiction and non-fiction books which he published himself, and also published books for his fellow retired journalist pals.

“It all kept him so busy and it was this busy that he loved, and why we can now refer to Revel as *Dr Anthony Revel Barker PhD FHRS. He completed his thesis on the life and works of Robert Lous Stevenson – who was his childhood hero after he had read Treasure Island – within 18 months. What an achievement at 79 years of age, and a fine accolade for his writing.”

There will also be a Memorial Service at St Brides Church, Fleet Street, London, later this year.

From ROY GREENSLADE: On the opening page of Revel Barker’s journalistic memoirs, there were two attempts to summarise his remarkable life. One pointed out that he had been deported, jailed, bombed, shelled, shot at, evacuated from a jungle by helicopter and had jumped from a burning plane. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d also spent years as an employee of Robert Maxwell.

The second “tribute” referred to his charmed life as foreign editor of a newspaper that didn’t publish foreign news, and editorial adviser to a proprietor who famously never took advice. Most important of all, noted the writer, “he taught Bob Maxwell how to swim”.

Revel, who died just short of his 80^th birthday, squeezed so much into his life it was as if he lived several lives as, variously, reporter, publisher, novelist, publicist, historian, academic, and online entrepreneur. Oh, I nearly forgot, also fly-fisherman and bridge player.

Anthony Revel Barker was born on 10 December, 1944 in Leeds, and from his earliest teenage years he was obsessed with newspapers. As a 14-year-old West Leeds High schoolboy he persuaded the editor of the Pudsey & Stanningley News to take him on as a contributor, writing for 1½d a line.

At 16, the day after leaving school, the paper gave him a full-time post. Within a year, he joined the Yorkshire Evening Post, becoming its youngest-ever reporter. He learned a great deal in his three years with the Why Pee, but was desperate to break into national papers.

After a series of failed interviews, he took a job with Brenards, the freelance agency that held a news monopoly at London (later Heathrow) Airport. His interviewees included David Niven, Sophia Loren and Lord Mountbatten.

Some six months later aged just 20, he realised his dream by joining the Daily Mirror’s Manchester office with a brief to cover England’s five northern counties. It was in Newcastle that he met his wife Angela (Angi), and together Angi and Revel raised her two children, Anna and James.

Revel prospered, covering several major stories, notably the Poulson corruption scandal and a prolonged escapade involving the 1974 Miss World, Helen Morgan, who was forced to give up her title when it was discovered she was an unwed mother.

By 1976, with Revel spending as much time in Holborn as in Withy Grove, he was offered a role as an investigative reporter in the Sunday Mirror’s London office. Two years on, he became the paper’s defence correspondent and, soon after that, its foreign editor.

Revel combined his editorial tasks with his role as Father of the Chapel, and he became the convenor of all the group’s NUJ chapels, making him responsible for almost 900 members. As difficult a task as that was, once Maxwell acquired the Mirror titles in July 1984, Revel decided it was impossible to continue.

Within months, Revel found himself as foreign manager and adviser to Maxwell. He brushed aside the inevitable remarks about being a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, pointing out that he continued to write, often for The People, where he became managing editor. Following Maxwell’s death, Revel finally said farewell to the Mirror group after 26 years .

For a while, he was publicity director at the Royal Military College of Science, based at what became Cranfield University, eventually writing its history. In fact, from then on, Revel never stopped writing. His output was remarkable, and he encouraged many retired hacks to write their reminiscences through his publishing company.

He republished some of the very best memoirs, such as Harry Procter’s The Street of Disillusion, Hugh Cudlipp’s Publish and Be Damned and Murray Sayle’s brilliant A Crooked Sixpence. He also gave us the memoirs of Colin Dunne, Liz Hodgkinson and Ian Skidmore, along with The Best of Vincent Mulchrone.

One of his greatest services was to become a newspaper archivist by founding the Gentlemen Ranters website where Fleet Street’s finest told stories about stories. As I noted at the time, some of them may even have been true!

Then there were his own novels, Hitler: The Last Conspiracy; The Blood Secret; The Magistrate of Montebello; The Mayor of Montebello and various non-fiction books, such as A History of the Yorkshire Wool Trade, a memory of the area where he lived and worked in his youth; and The First Gozitans, a history of the island of Gozo where he lived in his final years.

He first visited the island when he was 29 and was smitten, pledging to choose it as his place of retirement. He even acquired a boat, which, it transpired, had been part of Adolf Hitler’s personal fleet.

Revel wrote regularly for the Times of Malta and the Malta Independent. As if that wasn’t enough, he surely broke some kind of record by writing a thesis on Robert Louis Stevenson in just 18 months to be awarded his PhD.

Revel was also noted for his sense of humour and for his height. He was very tall, although I’m not certain he was 6ft 8in as The Times diary claimed last week. But the anecdote it reported was very much a true reflection of Revel’s wit. It told how a woman cheekily asked him if everything was in proportion. “Madam,” Revel replied. “If it were, I would be 9ft 6in tall.”