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.
Fiction|The Online Edition
Finished With Engines
Ian Jack
‘My father wrote a kind of autobiography in the years before he died.’ Ian Jack on his father and de-industrialization in Scotland.
Fiction|Issue 28
Unsteady People
Ian Jack
‘But from the distance of India, Sheffield looked different.’
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.’
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.
Those Who Felt Differently
Ian Jack
‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’
On the death of Diana.
The Granta Book Of Reportage
Edited by Ian Jack
Since its relaunch in 1979, Granta magazine has championed the art and craft of reportage – journalism marked by vivid description, a novelist’s eye to form and eyewitness reporting that reveals hidden truths about people and events that have shaped the world we know.
This new edition of The Granta Book of Reportage collects a dozen of the finest and most lasting pieces Granta has published. Featuring distinguished writers and reporters – John Simpson, James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Germaine Greer, Ryszard Kapuscinski, John le Carre, as well as new talents Elana Lappin, Suketu Mehta and Wendell Steavenson – the book covers some of the signal events of our time: the fall of Saigon, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq.
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.
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.’
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.
