George Barnsley (1875–1956) and playwright and whippet-breeder Katherine Mary (née Fielding-Smith),[1] a relative of the novelist Henry Fielding; her father, Rev.

He wrote and presented a satirical paper on the Irish medical establishment that year, winning him the University Philosophical Society Silver Medal for Oratory in 1939.

This paper angered the establishment and made it virtually impossible for him to finish his studies and medical residency in Ireland.

Fielding once said, "Medicine, to me, was a sentence I had to fulfill in order to be free to write...."[6] His first book, The Frog Prince and Other Poems, was published in 1952 in England.

He established a bustling medical practice in Maidstone, Kent following World War II, later enlisting two partners to join him.

They had five children: Jonathan, Mario Simon, Felicity, Mary Gabriel, and Fractal mathematician Michael Barnsley.