Ian Jack | Granta

Ian Jack

Ian Jack edited Granta from 1995 to 2007, having previously edited the Independent on Sunday. He has written on many subjects, including the Titanic, Kathleen Ferrier, the Hatfield train crash and the three members of the IRA active-service unit who were killed on Gibraltar. He is the editor of The Granta Book of Reportage and The Granta Book of India, and the author of a collection of journalism, The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain. He is working, not very quickly, on a book about the River Clyde.

Publications

Travel Writing

The Granta Book Of India

Ian Jack

£8.99
Reportage

The Granta Book Of Reportage

Ian Jack

£14.99
Books

Granta

Ian Jack

£9.99

Ian Jack on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | Issue 154
Essays & Memoir | Issue 154

The Stinky Ocean

Ian Jack

‘It was a peculiar, alopecic landscape of hummocks and gullies, with patches of grass growing on what looked like white earth, and rarely a soul to be seen.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 60
Essays & Memoir | Issue 60

Those Who Felt Differently

Ian Jack

‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’

On the death of Diana.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 138
Essays & Memoir | Issue 138

Ian Jack | Is Travel Writing Dead?

Ian Jack

‘Travel writing of most kinds, not just the humorous, has the history of colonialism perched on its shoulder.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 130
Essays & Memoir | Issue 130

Introduction: India – Another Way of Seeing

Ian Jack

Ian Jack's introduction to Granta 130: India.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98

The Deep End: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘Granta needs good readers as well as good writers.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98

Best of Young American Novelists 2: Introduction

Ian Jack

Ian Jack introduces Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98 padlock

War Zones: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘Feelings of hate and despair dwindle as they pass down the generations.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98

Loved Ones: Introduction

Ian Jack

One of the world's unfair divisions is that between the writer and the written-about, and this is nowhere more true than in the literary form called the memoir.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98

On the Road Again: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘Switzerland absolutely fulfils our idea of the picturesque’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 98
Essays & Memoir | Issue 98

Introduction: God’s Own Countries

Ian Jack

‘The idea of God as creator and custodian died, and many words in the old vocabulary were robbed of their potency.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 91
Essays & Memoir | Issue 91

Motley Notes

Ian Jack

‘Generalisations about the national psyche – supposing there is one – must always be treated with suspicion.’

Ian Jack on the eve of the 7/7 bombings.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock

Motley Notes

Ian Jack

‘What was it like to work in such a place?’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock

Motley Notes

Ian Jack

‘The last issue of Granta celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and retraced a little of its pre-1979 history as a magazine for and by the students of Cambridge University.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 91 padlock

Motley Notes

Ian Jack

Ian Jack’s introduction to Granta 87: Jubilee.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 86
Essays & Memoir | Issue 86

The Best Picture He Ever Saw

Ian Jack

‘Always and everywhere, this unequal struggle to preserve and remember.’

Ian Jack recalls the missing buildings of his hometown, Farnworth.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 86
Essays & Memoir | Issue 86

Best of Young British Novelists 2003: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘What had been an exercise to publicize the literary novel, at a time when there were few spotlights on this particular branch of culture, might now have a new role as an independent consumer's guide to novelists who deserved to be read in an era where 'a thrilling debut by a young writer of enormous talent' is the standard blurb, and where there are now so many spotlights directed by marketing money and the size of the writer's advance.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 86 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 86 padlock

What We Think of America

Ian Jack

‘…a fully-fledged, award-winning, gold-plated monster…it knows only one language—bombs and death’ —Harold Pinter ‘…the only...

Essays & Memoir | Issue 76
Essays & Memoir | Issue 76

Klever Kaff

Ian Jack

‘She was an extraordinary person, and an ordinary one.’

Ian Jack on the life of Kathleen Ferrier, the English contralto singer.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 73
Essays & Memoir | Issue 73

The 12.10 To Leeds

Ian Jack

‘Outside wars and nuclear accidents, it is hard to think of any technological failure which has had such lasting and widespread effects.’

Ian Jack on the Hatfield train crash, from Granta 73.

Essays & Memoir | Issue 67
Essays & Memoir | Issue 67

Leonardo’s Grave

Ian Jack

‘Tragedies needed heroes. Titanic’s band supplied them.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 67 padlock
Essays & Memoir | Issue 67 padlock

India! The Golden Jubilee: Introduction

Ian Jack

‘I first went to India twenty years ago as a reporter.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 28
Essays & Memoir | Issue 28

Unsteady People

Ian Jack

‘But from the distance of India, Sheffield looked different.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 25
Essays & Memoir | Issue 25

Gibraltar

Ian Jack

‘Everyone had theories which to a greater or lesser extent conflicted with the story in court.’

Ian Jack on the inquest into the SAS killing of three IRA members in Gibraltar.

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

Finished With Engines

Ian Jack

‘My father wrote a kind of autobiography in the years before he died.’

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