Barbara Godfrey

Jean Barbara Godfrey (née Frazer) was born in Teddington, London, on St Valentine’s Day. She graduated in Modern Languages at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and made journalism her career, working as a reporter on the Esher News in Surrey until moving to Hampshire with her husband Robert, a Fleet Street journalist, and their three young sons.

At their new seaside home, in 1973, they founded the Hayling Islander, a popular free monthly newspaper delivered by volunteers to every house on the island. Robert and Barbara, who was the paper’s Editor, later sold it to the Portsmouth News. It was closed down in 2019.

Robert and Barbara moved to Dartmoor in 1983 before eventually realising their dream of living on the tiny Channel Island of Alderney. There they launched the Alderney Magazine, which continued until Robert’s death in 1994.

Barbara published a humorous book, Naughty in Norway, inspired by her experiences as an au pair in Oslo in 1953 – also the subject of a talk she gave on Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio.

She published a volume of poetry, While Others Sleep, and a book of short stories, The Spare Child and Other Rather Nasty Stories.

Her love of poetry started at school when she studied the great German lyric poets, and she wrote her first poems in German.

She said: ‘My first story book was Naughty; my second Nasty; and my third a really Nice book, A Treeful of Peacocks, set in the five-acre Dartmoor paradise which was our home for five years.’

Barbara also painted in watercolours and oils. A selection may be viewed in the Art Gallery on this website.

R A FRAZER	– Barbara’s father
R W FRAZER	– Barbara’s grandfather

VISIT BARBARA’S OWN WEBSITE – CLICK BELOW

Naughty in Norway
A Saucy Saga of
the North

By Barbara Godfrey

188pp paperback – retail price £4.95

Available now from Amazon.co.uk (credit card). Published by Black Cat Communications

ISBN 1902976002

Land of the Midnight Fun

Naughty in Norway is a light-hearted tale of the hilarious escapades of two British girls who took jobs as housemaids near Oslo in 1953.

The book makes good-natured fun of the girls and their male conquests during their adventures in the Norwegian capital, the western fjords and the Land of the Midnight Sun, where they had to climb hundreds of steps in the sheer cliff face of the North Cape to reach the isolated plateau.

Highlights of the trip to the frozen north included seeing the wreck of the sunken German battleship Tirpitz being dismantled in the Tromsøfjord; watching a small boat sailing across the infamous Maelstrøm whirlpool; and gaining an insight into the offbeat nature of the folk whose lives are dominated for weeks on end by perpetual sunlight and then by endless night.

Besides its accounts of their often farcical skirmishes with frisky Norwegian men, the book is packed with information about this fascinating country, past and present, where the coronation of the English Queen – the great-niece of Norway's King Haakon – was followed with avid interest.

Naughty in Norway takes an affectionate but irreverent look at life in post-war Oslo, where foreigners were still a novelty and the British were held in esteem for their part in liberating Norway from Nazi Occupation, and compares it in the final chapter with the beautiful but gaudy city of the Nineties.

Some reviews

"Immensely readable . . . It is difficult to put the book aside once opened.": – John Gatrell, Alderney Society Bulletin
"A lovely book . . . I thoroughly enjoyed it. My Norwegian friends all feel the same.": – Sten Adeler, Norwegian Consul for the Channel Islands
"Ideal holiday reading.": – Alderney Journal
"Hilarious . . . guaranteed to cheer you up.": – Hayling Islander

Buy online NOW! To contact the publisher, please email books@blackcatcommunications.co.uk