Family and Early Life
Robert was the fourth son of Mark James Barrington-Ward, the rector of Duloe, Cornwall and an inspector of schools. He attended Westminster School, where he was a King's Scholar, and Balliol College, Oxford. While at Balliol, he was elected president of the Oxford Union Society and took a Third Class in Greats in 1913. Though planning for a career in the law and in politics, he undertook freelance editing work for The Times while reading for the Bar, and in February 1914 was given a position as secretary to the editor, Geoffrey Dawson. At the start of World War I Barrington-Ward became an officer with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (DCLI). He went on to serve in France and Belgium, where he was mentioned in despatches three times and awarded both the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross.
It the 1920s Barrington-Ward met and married Adele Radice, the daughter of an Indian civil servant who was working as a schoolteacher. The couple had two sons, Mark and Simon, and a daughter, Caroline. Mark followed his father by serving in the DCLI, studying at Balliol and editing a newspaper.
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