David Hilton-Barber

Pioneering people, interesting places and significant events – these are the themes of David Hilton-Barber’s non-fiction historical books. Highly readable and entertaining, his stories are told through the eyes of the characters living at the time.

The author identifies with the genre of writers such as TV Bulpin and AP Cartwright who popularised travel and history. He subscribes to the notion that was first expressed by George Cory, the eminent historian whose name is embodied at the Cory Collection at the Rhodes University Library:

It is no more than the grateful duty of a succeeding generation to revere the memory of those who bore the heat and burden of the days long gone. But better than merely holding in one’s memories of departed heroes is the placing on permanent record the account of their lives and works.

Hilton-Barber is a fourth generation South African. He was born in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape and holds a BA Honours degree from Rhodes University. He then trained as a journalist, following in the footsteps of his maternal great-grandfather Frederick York St Leger, founder and first editor of the Cape Times.