[7] Barrett was the editor of Ronald Skirth's pacifist First World War memoir The Reluctant Tommy, published by Macmillan in 2010.

[8] The book was favourably reviewed by Richard Holmes in the Evening Standard[9] and Jonathan Gibbs in the Financial Times,[10] Socialist Worker[11] and the Sunday Express.

[citation needed] In a revised introduction to the paperback edition (2011), Barrett defended the memoir, encouraging people to "read the book for yourself and make up your own mind who to believe".

[13] In 2012, Collins published The Sugar Girls,[1] a book co-written by Barrett with Nuala Calvi, telling the stories of women workers at Tate & Lyle's East End factories since the Second World War.

[18] In 2013, Barrett and Calvi's second book together, GI Brides, was published by Harper, based on interviews with British women who married Americans during the Second World War.

[25] In 2007 he played John Walker in Eastern Angles' production of Arthur Ransome's We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and was praised for "neatly avoid[ing] any jolly hockeysticks".