Malcolm Charles Barber is a British scholar of medieval history, described as the world's leading living expert on the Knights Templar

Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...

. He is considered to have written the two most comprehensive books on the subject, The Trial of the Templars (1978) and The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (1994). He has been an editor for The Journal of Medieval History and written many articles on the Templars, the Cathars, various elements of the Crusades

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...

, and the reign of Philip IV of France

Philip IV of France

Philip the Fair was, as Philip IV, King of France from 1285 until his death. He was the husband of Joan I of Navarre, by virtue of which he was, as Philip I, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne from 1284 to 1305.-Youth:A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of...

.

Biography

Born in 1943, Barber attended Walpole Grammar School in Ealing

Ealing

Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...

 from 1954-1961, followed by the University of Nottingham

University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, United Kingdom, with further campuses in Ningbo, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...

 from 1961-1966, where he received his Bachelors Degree in 1964. He attended the British School at Rome

British School at Rome

The British School at Rome was established in 1901 and granted a Royal Charter in 1912 as an educational institute in the fields of archaeology, literature, music, and history of Rome and Italy of every period, and for the study of the fine arts and architecture...

 from 1965-1966, and received his PhD in 1968 from the University of Nottingham.

Barber was a Professor of Medieval European History in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Reading

University of Reading

The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...

 in the UK, until his retirement in September 2004.

Positions

• Director of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at Reading, 1986-1989
• British Academy Research Readership, 1989-91
• Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 1997-8
• Senior Fellowship, National Humanities Center, North Carolina, 1998-9

Journal editor

• (with P. Noble and J. Norton-Smith), Reading Medieval Studies, 1977-1985
• Annual Bulletin of the Society for the Study of the Crusade and the Latin East, 1986-90
• The Journal of Medieval History, 1996-2002.

Works

• 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
• The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press, 1994
• Crusaders and Heretics, Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries. Collected Studies. Aldershot, 1995
• The Cathars. Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. Longman, 2000

Edited

• The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick. Variorum, 1994
• (with K. Bate), The Templars, Manchester University Press, 2002
• (with M. Ailes), The History of the Holy War. Ambroise's Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, 2 volumes. The Boydell Press, 2003.