Education and Early Career
Barbara Ward was born in Heworth, Yorkshire on 23 May 1914, but her family soon moved to Felixstowe. Her father was a solicitor with Quaker tendencies, while her mother was a devout Catholic. Barbara went to a convent school before studying in Paris: first at a lycée, then for some months at the Sorbonne before going on to Germany. Though she had once planned to study modern languages, her interest in public affairs led to a degree course in politics, philosophy, and economics at Somerville College, Oxford University, from which she graduated in 1935.
She did post-graduate work on Austrian politics and economics. After witnessing antisemitism there and in Nazi Germany she began to help Jewish refugees, and mobilise Catholic support for any forthcoming UK war effort, although she had initially been "sympathetic to Hitler". With Christopher Dawson, the historian, as leader and Ward as secretary, the Sword of the Spirit was established as an organisation to bring together Catholics and Anglicans opposing Nazism. It became a Roman Catholic group whose policies were promoted by the Dublin Review which Dawson edited, and for which Ward wrote regularly.
During the Second World War, she worked for the Ministry of Information and travelled in Europe and the US. Partly on the strength of her 1938 book, The International Share-out, Geoffrey Crowther, editor of The Economist, offered her a job. She left the magazine in 1950 having risen to foreign editor, but continued to contribute articles throughout her life. As well as writings on economic and foreign policy, her broadcasts on Christian values in wartime were published as The Defence of the West by Sword of the Spirit. During this time she was also president of the Catholic Women's League and a popular panel member of the BBC programme The Brains Trust which answered listeners' questions. In 1946 she became a governor of the BBC and of the Old Vic theatre.
After the war, Ward was a supporter of the Marshall Plan, of a strong Europe, and of a European free trade area.
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