Elspeth Barker was a novelist and journalist. She was educated in Scotland and at Oxford.

Barker's novel O Caledonia won four awards and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. She has reviewed extensively and written features for the Independent on Sunday, Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, LRB, TLS, Harpers & Queen, Scotland on Sunday, Country Living, Vogue, etc. She edited the anthology Loss for Dent/Orion in 1997.

Her first husband was the poet George Barker by whom she had five children, including the novelist Raffaella Barker. In 2007 she married the writer Bill Troop.