Nick Barratt
Nick Barratt has a PhD from King’s College, London, having spent three years working on medieval state finance and fiscal history with Professor David Carpenter.
A subsequent career at The National Archives has seen him grow into one of television’s most popular historians with appearances on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, The Great British Story and History Mysteries, Sky1’s So You Think You’re Royal?, ITV’s Missing Millions and Secrets from the Attic, and Channel 4’s Not Forgotten and 100% English. Nick has regularly contributed to discussions on BBC News and This Morning and his other series credits include the BAFTA-nominated Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (BBC2).
Nick has published TRACING THE HISTORY OF YOUR HOUSE (PRO Publications), THE FAMILY DETECTIVE (Ebury), the “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GENEALOGY (HarperCollins), and NICK BARRATT’S GUIDE TO YOUR ANCESTOR’S LIVES (Pen & Sword) . Nick has also compiled and narrated LOST VOICES FROM THE TITANIC (Preface Publishing, 2009) and has written a seminal city history, GREATER LONDON: A HISTORY OF THE SUBURBS, which was published by Random House Books in November 2012. THE FORGOTTEN SPY, the story of his Great Uncle Ernest Holloway Oldham, a cipher clerk in the British foreign office, who spied for the Soviet Union between 1929-1933 was published in May 2016 by Blink Publishing. His latest book THE RESTLESS KINGS presents the struggle for supremacy between the first Plantagenet King, Henry II, and his sons, and was published by Faber & Faber in 2018.
Nick set up Sticks Research Agency in 2000 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, an Honorary Teaching Fellow of the University of Dundee and formerly Editor in Chief of Your Family History magazine (2010-2013), as well as a regular columnist at The Telegraph (2008 - 2010). Having spent two years as Director of Senate House Library, he was appointed Director of Learner and Discovery at The Open University in 2019 before leaving to join Royal Holloway University of London as Executive Director, Student Journey in 2023.
Nick Barratt lives just outside London, in Surrey.
www.nickbarratt.co.uk