Barbara Amiel

Infobox Officeholder

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honorific-prefix = The Right Honourable
name = Lady Black of Crossharbour
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birth_date = birth date and age|1940|12|4
birth_place = Watford, Hertfordshire, England
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residence = Toronto, Canada and Palm Beach, Florida
nationality = British
other_names =
known_for = Wife of Conrad Black
education = University of Toronto
employer = Macleans
occupation = Writer, columnist, Socialite
home_town = Hamilton, Ontario
title = Baroness Black of Crossharbour
salary = $1.1 million (1997-2003)
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religion = Jewish
spouse = Gary Smith (1964-1964)
George Jonas (1974-1979)
David Graham (1984-1988)
Conrad Black (1992- present)
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Barbara Joan Estelle Amiel, Baroness Black of Crossharbour (born in Watford, Hertfordshire, England on December 4, 1940), is a British-Canadian journalist, writer, and socialite. She is also the wife of former media baron Conrad Black.

Early life

Amiel was born into a Jewish family in 1940. Her parents divorced when she was eight, after her father, Harold, left her mother for another woman. Her mother subsequently remarried and in November, 1952 the couple emigrated with Barbara, her sister and half-brother, to Hamilton, Ontario. Her father later committed suicide in 1956.

While in England, Amiel attended North London Collegiate School in Canons Park, Edgware, Greater London, an independent girls' school founded by Frances Mary Buss in 1850. Family difficulties--including some financial hardship---during the early years in Canada, precipitated her living independently for periods of time during her adolescence during which she held a variety of jobs to support herself. In 1959 she entered the University of Toronto, where she attended University College and took an honours degree in Philosophy & English. Amiel was an active communist, and was a delegate in 1962 to the Soviet-organised World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. [Robinson, James. For richer, for poorer?, "The Observer", 25 January 2004. [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1130406,00.html] ]

Married life

Amiel entered a brief marriage to Gary Smith in 1964 when she was 23 years old. She was married a second time to poet, broadcaster and author George Jonas from 1974 to 1979. A third marriage was to cable businessman David Graham in 1984, but they were divorced by 1988.

In July 1992, she married Conrad Black (who was granted, in 2001, a life peerage as "Lord Black of Crossharbour"), a Canadian-British author and media baron who was convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice in 2007. Amiel stood by her husband throughout the lengthy trial, and published some of her observations in her regular column for Maclean's Magazine.

Career in journalism

Amiel has been a longtime columnist for "Maclean's" magazine (1977-present) noted for her right wing political views. In the late 1960s Amiel was a story editor and on-camera presence for CBC TV Public Affairs. In the 1970s she was intermittently on contract with both CTV and TV Ontario. "By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death of Christine Demeter" (1978), which she co-authored with her second husband, won The Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Fact Crime book. She was a columnist for the "Toronto Sun" in the 1980s and 1990s, also serving as the daily's editor from 1983 until 1985 (making her the first female to edit a daily metropolitan newspaper in Canada) before returning to Britain.

From 1986 to 1994, Amiel was a columnist for "The Times" and "The Sunday Times". In 1994, she moved to the "Daily Telegraph", owned by her fourth husband. She has served as vice-president, editorial of Hollinger, the holding company Conrad Black controlled.

Amiel is known for having strong opinions about what she sees as the acceptance of antisemitism in some circles. She has also been criticized for writing articles that portray Arabs in an allegedly racist fashion. In December 2001, she caused a furore by reporting, in "The Spectator", remarks by the then-French ambassador to the UK, Daniel Bernard, who described Israel as "that shitty little country." [MacAskill, Ewen. Israel seeks head of French envoy, "Guardian UK", December 20, 2001. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,622009,00.html] ]

In 2003, she attacked BBC current affairs coverage, claiming that it has been seen as a "bad joke" for decades. Amiel lost her position as a columnist on the "Daily Telegraph" in mid-2004 after civil suits were exchanged between her husband and "The Telegraph"'s parent company in the wake of a corporate battle which led to criminal charges being laid against her husband in late 2005 and a trial in Chicago in 2007. In 2005, she rejoined "Maclean's" as a columnist under its new editor, Kenneth Whyte.

A biography of the couple by Tom Bower, "Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge", [Bower, Tom. The Fast Lady. Times Online. 2006. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2426342,00.html] ] featuring an unflattering portrayal of Amiel, was published in November 2006. The book has been denounced by Black in "The Daily Telegraph" and Black filed a suit in Canada against its author. [Black, Conrad. Lies, lies, lies. Telegraph.co.uk. 2006-10-30. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=OUAIM0OW0UYNBQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/10/29/nblack29.xml] ]

Conrad Black's fraud trial

Amiel's fourth husband, Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour, was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice in a Chicago courtroom on July 13, 2007. Amiel was with him every day of the trial since its beginning in March 2007. Lord Black was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in December 2007. He reported to Coleman Correctional Facility in Florida on March 3, 2008. Amiel is expected by some to return to their home on the Bridle Path in Toronto, Canada and to make trips to Florida to visit her incarcerated husband. Lord Black's appeal against his convictions was turned down by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on 24 June 2008. Further appeals are in process.

In August 2008, Amiel published a five-page defense of her husband in "Maclean's" magazine in which she portrayed herself as the victim of a gross injustice. "My life was wiped out in Chicagomdash at least all that mattered in it," she wrote. "What does it matter if one well-off elderly white woman with too many pairs of expensive shoes now finds her social life largely limited to visiting her dearly missed husband in a U.S. federal correctional institution." Amiel went on to argue that gross defects in the American judicial system matter to everyone. "If ostensibly privileged defendants like us can be baselessly smeared, wrongfully deprived, falsely accused, shamelessly persecuted, innocently convicted and grotesquely punished, it doesn't take much to figure out what happens to the vulnerable, the powerless, the working-class people whose savings have been eaten up trying to defend themselves." [Amiel, Barbara. This is humiliating. "Maclean's", August 4, 2008, p.46]

Publications

*"By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death of Christine Demeter", 1977, George Jonas with Barbara Amiel. (Jonas and Amiel were married at the time.)
*"Confessions", 1980, by Barbara Amiel, Toronto, Canada: Macmillan of Canada (ISBN 0-7705-1841-9)
*"Celebrate Our City ... Toronto ... 150th Anniversary", 1983, Barbara Amiel and Lorraine Monk, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart (ISBN 0-7710-6085-8)
*"EAST AND WEST: Selected Poems. With a profile of the poet by Barbara Amiel", by George Faludy and Barbara Amiel, 1978, Toronto: Hounslow Press.

References

External links

* [http://www.nndb.com/people/325/000028241 NNDB Who's Who]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/black.html The Life and Times of Conrad Black]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1296236,00.html The Guardian profile: Barbara Amiel]