Barbara Ewing

Barbara Ewing (born 14 January 1939) is a New Zealand actress, playwright and novelist based in the UK. In the 1980s Ewing played the character Agnes Fairchild in British comedy series Brass. Ewing's novel The Petticoat Men was shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award in 2015.

Early life

Ewing was born in Carterton, New Zealand. Her father's job at the Ministry of Education included reviewing books, and he brought many home for Ewing to read as she was growing up. She started writing when she was young.

Career Actor

Her first television role was in A Choice of Kings (1966). Her first film role was in the horror film Torture Garden (1967) with Amicus Productions. The next film was Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) with Hammer Films directed by Freddie Francis. She has had film acting roles in The Reckoning (1969), S.O.S. Titanic (1979), Eye of the Needle (1981), Haunters of the Deep (1984) (Children's Film Foundation), When the Whales Came (1989), Brothers of the Head (2005) and Mute (2018).

Television acting roles included the Granada Television comedy series Brass with Timothy West (1983–90), the character Treen Dudgeon in the BBC series Comrade Dad (1986) with George Cole and Doris Hare, A Ghost Story for Christmas, titled The Ash Tree (1975), playing Anne Mothersole who was tried as a witch, and she was in one episode of The Sweeney (S4-E7 'Bait ') in 1978.

Also as a stage actor Ewing had a hit one-woman show in 1989, Alexandra Kollontai, about the only woman in Lenin's cabinet in 1917. It gained acclaim in London, and at the Edinburgh and Sydney Festivals. A Dangerous Vine (1999) The Trespass (2002) Rosetta (2005) The Mesmerist (2007) The Fraud (2009) The Circus of Ghosts (2011) (sequel to The Mesmerist) The Petticoat Men (2014) One Minute Crying (2020)

On 17 February 2015, it was announced that Ewing's The Petticoat Men had made the longlist for the prestigious Ngaio Marsh Award, a crime fiction award in her home country of New Zealand.

In 2020, Ewing's memoir One Minute Crying Time was published. Covering her childhood, adolescence and early-adulthood in New Zealand, the book takes the reader up to 1962 when she left for the UK, and draws from diary and later journal entries Ewing kept from the ages of 12 to 23. It includes a romantic relation with a young Māori man which at the time was controversial.