A Little Art Education by Lynn Barber

With a large glass of red wine at her elbow, Lynn Barber regaled the packed audience at Gainsborough’s House with anecdotes from her long career in journalism. She was being interviewed by her agent and publisher Claire Conville as part of EA festival 2025. Lynn was talking about her new book A Little Art Education, which features highlights of her interviews with some of the best known artists in the UK.

Lynn began her journalism at Penthouse in 1967. The magazine had a tiny staff so she gained valuable experience as they all ‘did a bit of everything’. Her editor’s motto was ‘mustn’t gush, mustn’t gush’, a motto that still influences how she writes. Lynn joined The Independent on Sunday at its launch in 1990, worked at The Observer during 1996-2009 and has also written for The Times and The Telegraph. She has become the most formidable interviewer of her time, a fearless writer, not afraid to offend, earning the nickname the ‘demon barber of Fleet Street’, which she feels is not quite fair. In 1992 she was the first journalist to address rumours about Jimmy Savile in print, asking him if it was true ‘he liked little girls’, a suggestion he denied.

A notable early interview came in 1969 when Penthouse magazine sent Lynn to Paris to interview Salvador Dali. The interview overran so Dali booked her a room at the Hotel Meurice, where she stayed for three days, interviewing Dali every morning and attending parties in his suite every evening. As a goodbye gift Dali presented her with a conical hat covered with wax flowers and butterflies, which he had originally designed for his wife.

Lynn has had many notable encounters over the years, such as with Shane MacGowan and a very inebriated Marianne Faithful. She does not mind when her interviewees behave badly. What is hard is ‘people who are nice – so hard to interview, so little to write!’ 

Lynn is not fond of interviewing actors, complaining that they are ‘are so barriered by their PR’, who often want to sit in and control the interview. But she has always loved to interview artists, commenting that they never care about their image: ‘They just want you to take their art seriously’. She has always had an interest in art and was invited to be a Turner Prize judge in 2005. She was very pleased and excited to be asked but she would not do it again.

Her book, A Little Art Education, features pictures, illustrations and stories about the artists she has interviewed. Some, like Tracy Emin, have become friends. One artist who eluded her was Lucien Freud.

As for the future, she has nothing to say about AI and she refuses to conduct interviews on Zoom. She feels that journalists are scared of writing stuff now. ‘Everyone is so scared of being cancelled, they are afraid to write freely’. And she has nothing good to say about getting older. Our hope is that she continues to delight and entertain us with her fearless and entertaining writing.

Dot Granville and Dymphna Crowe