Eddie Barber was educated at Repton, one of England's oldest public schools, founded in 1557. At Repton, proper English was not a subject; it was the air one breathed: spoken at the lectern, written in the weekly essay, lived at the dinner table. From Repton he went up to the London School of Economics, where he took his degree and learned that the right words, well delivered, carry further than almost anything else.
Since then Eddie has spent six decades using the language at its best and, along the way, teaching others to do the same. He trained formally as a teacher and holds both a PGCE from the University of London and the Cambridge-accredited CELTA — the qualifications that distinguish a trained English teacher from a mere native speaker. He teaches because it is the thing he most enjoys: watching a student stop translating and start belonging.
His students are professionals, families and ambitious learners from Shanghai to Riyadh. They come to him for the grammar. They stay for everything around it: the introductions, the small talk, the letters, the toasts, the hundred small courtesies that make English social and business life work.
"Anyone can teach you English. I'd rather teach you to be at home in it."
A lifelong love of British history
Away from the lesson table, Eddie is a keen student of British history and culture, and it shows in his teaching. A lesson on the past tense can easily turn into the story of Trafalgar. For his students that is part of the point: English makes far more sense once you know something of the country that made it.
Eddie lives in London, teaches online across every time zone, and can be engaged to teach in person: in London, or wherever you happen to be.