Barbara Amiel
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Barbara Amiel Black, Baroness Black of Crossharbour (born Barbara Amiel in Hertfordshire, England, December 4 1940), is a journalist, and, since 1992, the wife of newspaper magnate Lord Black of Crossharbour.
Her parents divorced at the age of eight when her father left her mhother for another woman. Her mother remarried and Amiel moved to Hamilton, Ontario with her mother and step-father. The family dissolved and Amiel left home at the age of fourteen and entered a short-lived marriage as a youth.
She was a longtime columnist for Maclean's Magazine, and has served as a vice-president of Hollinger. In the 1970's, Amiel was a broadcaster with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and was a columnist for the Toronto Sun in the 1980s and 1990s also serving as the daily's editor-in-chief from 1983 to 1985 before returning to Britain.
From 1986 to 1994 Amiel was a columnist for The Times of London and The Sunday Times. In 1994, she moved to Conrad Black's Daily Telegraph.
She is Jewish, and has been outspoken about what she sees as anti-Semitism, anti-Israeli sentiment, and its acceptability in some circles. In December 2001 she caused a furore by comments in The Spectator about anti-Israel remarks by a French diplomat, unnamed in the piece; this picked up on a previous Petronella Wyatt column about London's chattering classes. In 2003 she attacked BBC current affairs coverage, claiming that it has been seen as a 'bad joke' for decades.
In 1992 she became notorious for a defence of David Irving. Her memoir, Confessions, was published in 1979.
Lady Black lost her position as a columnist on the Daily Telegraph in mid-2004, after she was sued for looting Hollinger International.