author
Noel Barwell
1879–1953
Best known for writing vividly about place and public life, this British writer and barrister brought an observant, practical eye to everything from Cambridge to colonial India. His career also left an unusual literary afterlife through his connection with the Bengali author Sankar.
1 Audiobook
Cambridge
by Noel Barwell
About the author
Born in 1879, Noel Frederick Barwell was a British writer, soldier, and barrister. Available sources link him to Trinity College, Cambridge, and to service with the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry during the First World War. He is credited as the author of Cambridge, a book in the Beautiful England series, which reflects his gift for clear, descriptive writing.
Barwell later became closely associated with Calcutta, where multiple sources describe him as the last English barrister to practice at the Calcutta High Court. That role made him part of the world he wrote about as well as the legal and social history of British India.
He is also remembered because the young Sankar, who became one of Bengal’s most widely read novelists, worked under him as a clerk and later wrote about that experience. Barwell died in 1953 in India.