Barbara Hall MBE, 96, tells her extraordinary journey and offers advice on how to live a happy life

Barbara Hall, 96, had a career spanning over 70 years that has led her from a town in rural Derbyshire to Buckingham Palace.

Barbara is the ideal of an amazing, accomplished career woman – yet she used to dress up as a boy for the first few years of her life. She discovered out she was the lone survivor of a triplet birth when she was six years old. Her mother would disguise herself as a boy in order to distract her father from his grief over the loss of two boys.

Despite this, Barbara, who was born in 1923 in Derbyshire, remembers her childhood happily. Barbara’s mother, unable to have any more children and motivated by the terrible experience of childbirth, was determined that she would have the same advantage as the boys and encouraged her to focus on her academics.

Barbara explains, “My mother realized that being a girl was a disadvantage back then. She did everything she could to make sure I got anything they wanted. By the age of three, I had taken elocution lessons, piano lessons, and had learnt to read.”

Barbara was bright, and at the age of eleven, she received a competitive scholarship to a local grammar school. She developed a passion for crossword puzzles when she was there. “I had published my first crossword by the age of 14 after winning a competition in the Daily Mail,” she explains. “They were completely unaware of my age.”

Barbara traveled to London at the age of 18 to pursue her dream of becoming a speech therapist and obtained a position at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but her studies were cut short when World War II broke out.

“I traveled to London for the first time as soon as I finished school to continue my studies, but then the war broke out,” she explains. “My father arranged for me to work on the railways on a temporary basis. Because the war shook us up so badly, I stayed and never got to go to LAMDA. It was not until 1941 that I was finally able to flee!”

She worked as a clerk for two years before joining the Women’s Royal Naval Service, which attracted 75,000 women during WWII.
Her analytical skills and passion for cryptic crosswords earned her the position.

“They were seeking for cooks, stewards, or crossword puzzle solvers. They only permitted me to join because of this. I joined the coding offices and was stationed on England’s east coast, where I coded the captains’ sailing orders. After giving the captain the code directions, I once became stuck on a ship by accident. My senior was not pleased!”

She married and moved to Zambia with her husband and four sons when the war ended. They initially intended to stay for two years, but they ended up staying for twelve since they were so impressed with it.

“I worked as a journalist for the Northern Rhodesia Government Information Office while in Africa,” Barbara explains. “Later, my husband and I, along with a few friends, founded our own newspaper, which was the country’s first English-language publication, and I began the country’s first advice column, ‘Tell Me Josephine.'”

This popular column was later turned into a book, which was translated into 19 languages. “On the newspaper team, I was the sole woman. I have to balance it with taking care of the kids. In the mornings, I’d work from my office, writing short stories and putting crossword puzzles together, and in the afternoons, I’d be at the school gate, ready to bring them up. In those days, men didn’t have to think about it.”

She and her husband pushed for Zambia’s independence while living there, and she became close friends with President Kenneth Kaunda. “We were fervent supporters of his candidacy and sought to help him in any manner we could with the resources we had.” She met numerous world leaders during that time, including Mrs. Ghandhi, India’s first female prime minister.

The couple settled in Kensington after their return to the UK, until her husband left her for another woman, which she regards as the toughest difficulty of her life. “I had to build from zero,” she explains.

Barbara was at the top of her game professionally, compiling crosswords for several well-known magazines, including the Daily Mail and The Observer, starting to publish crossword books, and breaking the Guinness World Record by designing a cryptic crossword.

She began selling her work to The Sunday Times at this time, and in 1977 she was recruited as Puzzles editor, a position she held until she retired in 2010 at the age of 87. In 2007, she was granted an MBE for her contributions to the newspaper industry.

She continued to make up crossword puzzles and travel to Europe, China, and the United States well into her 90s.

Barbara currently spends her time reading, going to local social gatherings, and keeping up with her five boys’ experiences all around the world. “I don’t have time to solve crossword puzzles anymore!”

Barbara’s best advice for living a happy life is to: