On this day in 1946 Julian Barnes was born. It is now two decades since Granta magazine featured Barnes in its "Best of Young British Fiction" issue. If this did not exactly launch his career (Barnes protests the claim), it certainly put him in good company -- Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and others. The prize-winning Flaubert's Parrot was published the next year (1984), over a dozen books have followed, and today Barnes is approaching 'personality' status. Although perhaps he is not quite there: in Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget is so over-awed at finding herself face-to-face with Barnes at a party that she runs off to the bathroom; the movie plumps up Barnes's role and gives it to the more recognizable Rushdie ... FULL STORY »
