About Barbara Godfrey

Barbara Godfrey was born in Teddington, London, on St Valentine’s Day. She graduated at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in Modern Languages and then made journalism her career, working as a reporter on the Esher News in Surrey.

In 1968, Barbara and her husband Robert, a former Fleet Street journalist, moved with their three young sons to Hayling Island on the South Coast. Five years later they founded the Hayling Islander community newspaper, with Barbara as Editor and Robert in charge of production. The monthly newspaper grew steadily in size and popularity and won an award for editorial excellence.

Robert and Barbara moved to Dartmoor in 1983 before eventually realising their dream of living in the tiny Channel Island of Alderney. There they launched the Alderney Magazine, which continued until Robert’s death in 1994.

In 1999, Barbara published a lively and humorous paperback, Naughty in Norway, inspired by her hitching adventures, joyous encounters with Norwegians and their culture, and experiences as an au pair in Oslo in 1953, which were the subject of a talk she gave on Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio in May 1964. She also published a volume of poetry, While Others Sleep, and a book of short stories, The Spare Child and Other Rather Nasty Stories. Her love of poetry started at school when she studied the great German lyric poets, and she wrote her first poems in German.

She said: “My first book was Naughty; my second Nasty; and now I’m working on a really Nice book, A Treeful of Peacocks, set in the five-acre paradise which was our home for five years.”

Barbara was also an accomplished painter in watercolours and oils. She particularly loved painting seascapes, and she exhibited and sold many of her paintings.

Barbara Godfrey, whose humorous romance Naughty in Norway has been selling well, recently returned from a trip to the Land of the Midnight Sun, north Norway, with the exciting news that the book is now on sale in most of the main towns in that region as well as in six Oslo bookstores.

“This was my first trip since 1953, when the book is set, to North Cape, Europe’s most northerly point. I took enough copies with me for the bookshops in that area. It turns out that the book is going down well with Norwegians, although it is in English,” she said. “The copies I placed in Oslo’s biggest bookshops last year sold out and they wanted more. I was particularly thrilled when the manager of the bookshop at Oslo airport told me she had heard about the book and wants to stock it when the shop is enlarged in the autumn.

“The book is on sale in the bookshop at the University of Tromsø – after all, it has a lot of fascinating information about post-war Norway and the country’s culture and history, set against a light-hearted background.”

Barbara realised how much Norwegians were enjoying the book when the Norwegian Consul for the Channel Islands, Sten Adeler, a pilot with Aurigny airlines who lives in Jersey, rang to say he had bought a copy at Alderney airport and enjoyed it so much he sent it to a friend.

“I sent my next copy to the Norwegian Consul in London,” he said. “It is a delightful book and all Norwegians would love it. The last chapter, about how Norway has changed since I grew up in Oslo, made me so sad. I agreed with everything Barbara writes.”

Barbara has translated a Norwegian book about the Channel Islands into English.

“It’s a superb hardback volume of more than 100 stunning photographs of all the islands, taken by a friend of Sten’s, Oddbjørn Monsen,” she said. “They include 13 Alderney scenes, including aerial views, and my friends here were so impressed when they saw it that they have all bought a copy.

“Now an English version may be produced for sale in the islands. Meanwhile I have printed a translation to go with every book.”