Barbara Amiel
British journalist, writer, and socialite
Barbara Joan Estelle Amiel, Baroness Black of Crossharbour, DSS (born 4 December 1940), is a British-Canadian conservative journalist, writer, and socialite. She is married to former media proprietor Conrad Black.
Early life and career
Amiel was born into a Jewish family in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, the daughter of Vera Isserles (née Barnett) and Harold Joffre Amiel. A cousin was the oncologist, broadcaster and humorist Rob Buckman. Her father, originally a solicitor, became a Lieutenant Colonel serving in Italy during World War II, but was discharged because of injury. Her parents divorced when she was eight, after her father left her mother for another woman. Amiel attended North London Collegiate School in Edgware, Greater London, an independent girls' school.
Amiel's mother remarried and, in November 1952, the couple emigrated with Barbara, her sister and half-brother, to Hamilton, Ontario. She never saw her biological father again after her mother remarried. Family difficulties, including a period when her step-father was unemployed, precipitated her living independently for periods of time from the age of 14 during which she gained employment to support herself.
“Barbara Amiel” enters the record as british journalist, writer, and socialite. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barbara, Amiel and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Barbara Amiel” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Barbara, Amiel and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q431807. VIAF identifies the subject as 37758697. The Library of Congress control number is n77005332. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbara Amiel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.