Editing Pat Barker (section)

==Early life and education==
Patricia Mary W. Drake<ref name=booker>{{cite web |title=All the Booker Winners Ranked & Rated |website=Eyes on the Prize |date=15 June 2021 |url=https://www.ontheprize.co.uk/blog/the-ghost-road-pat-barker-1995-booker-prize-winner |access-date=14 October 2024}}</ref> was born on 8 May 1943<ref name="GuardianAug03"/> to a working-class family in [[Thornaby-on-Tees]] in the [[North Riding of Yorkshire]], England.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/pat-barker | title=Pat Barker | publisher=[[British Council]] | work=British Council Literature | access-date=2016-01-26}}</ref> Her mother Moyra died in 2000;<ref name="GuardianAug03" /> her father's identity is unknown. According to ''[[The Times]]'', Moyra became pregnant "after a drunken night out while in [[Women's Royal Naval Service|the Wrens]]." In a social climate where [[Legitimacy (family law)|illegitimacy]] was regarded with shame, she told people that the resulting child was her sister, rather than her daughter. They lived with Barker's grandmother Alice and step-grandfather William, until her mother married and moved out when Barker was seven.<ref name="Times07">{{cite news | url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1995669.ece | archive-url=https://archive.today/20080704103514/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1995669.ece | url-status=dead | archive-date=4 July 2008 | title=Pat Barker's last battle? War has been her greatest obsession – and it looms large in her new novel | work=The Sunday Times | date=1 July 2007 | last=Kemp | first=Peter}}</ref>  Barker could have joined her mother, she told ''[[The Guardian]]'' in 2003, but chose to stay with her grandmother "because of love of her, and because my stepfather didn't warm to me, nor me to him."<ref name="GuardianAug03" /> Her grandparents ran a [[Fish and chips#Vendors|fish and chip shop]] which failed and the family was, she told ''The Times'' in 2007, "poor as church mice; we were living on [[National Assistance Act 1948|National Assistance]] – 'on the pancrack', as my grandmother called it."<ref name="Times07" /> 

At the age of eleven, Barker won a place at [[Grammar school#Grammar schools in the Tripartite System|grammar school]], attending [[King James's School, Knaresborough|King James Grammar School]] in [[Knaresborough]] and [[Grangefield School|Grangefield Grammar School]] in Stockton-on-Tees.<ref>{{cite book | last =Brannigan | first =John | title =Pat Barker: Contemporary British Novelists | publisher =Manchester University Press | year =2005| pages =xi and 6 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=ciK-tkCae-QC&q=Pat+Barker+grammar&pg=PA6 | isbn =978-0-7190-6577-4}}
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Barker, who says she has always been an avid reader, studied international history at the [[London School of Economics]] from 1962-65.<ref>[http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/alumniRelations/newsAndPublications/celebratedAlumni.htm#generated-subheading17 "Celebrated Alumni: UK", ''www.lse.ac.uk'' (2007)] Retrieved 17 January 2008.</ref> After graduating in 1965, she returned home to nurse her grandmother, who died in 1971.