Biography[edit]

Born in 1943, Barber attended Walpole Grammar School in Ealing from 1954–1961, followed by the University of Nottingham from 1961–1966, where he received his first-class degree in 1964.[2] His post-grad studies were under Bernard Hamilton in the area of grandmasters of the Templars.[2] Barber attended the British School at Rome from 1965–1966, then was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Reading in 1966.[2] He received his PhD in 1968 from the University of Nottingham.[2]


Barber was a Professor of Medieval European History in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Reading in the UK, until his retirement in September 2004.

Director of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at Reading, 1986–1989

British Academy Research Readership, 1989–1991

Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1997–1998

Senior Fellowship, National Humanities Center, North Carolina, 1998–1999

The Trial of the Templars, Cambridge University Press. 1st edition, 1978. 2nd edition, 2006

The Two Cities. Medieval Europe 1050-1320. Routledge. 1st edition, 1992. 2nd edition, 2004

. Cambridge University Press, 1994

The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple

Crusaders and Heretics, Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries. Collected Studies. Aldershot, 1995

The Cathars. Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. Longman, 2000

. Yale University Press, 2012

The Crusader States

Curry, Anne (2007). "Malcolm Barber: An Appreciation". In Housley, Norman (ed.). Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar, Presented to Malcolm Barber. Ashgate Publishing.

Reading University biography

Staff listing at Reading University

Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies