Julian Barnes (Leicester, 1946) is an English writer. He studied at Oxford University and worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary before dedicating himself to full-time writing in 1980. He has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Booker Prize in 2011 for his novel "The Sense of an Ending". Among his best-known works are "Flaubert's Parrot" and "Arthur & George". He has also written detective novels under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.