I.M. Ian Jack (1945-2022): An Appreciation

By Jonathan Taylor

On 28th October 2022, author, editor and journalist Ian Jack died aged 77, after a short illness. At different times, he was editor of The Independent on Sunday, Granta Magazine, and regular columnist for The Guardian. 

This article, though, isn't intended as an obituary or biography. I didn't know Ian long or well enough to write about his whole life, and only met him a handful of times. You can read an obituary in The Guardian here. Rather, I want to write a short piece about him and the huge impact he had on me - as with many other authors whom he edited and mentored over the years - despite the relative brevity of our association. 

I first met Ian back in 2005. He was then editor of Granta, and had been since 1995. He published my article in the magazine, and then my memoir - my first non-academic book - in 2007, with Granta Books. I was immensely lucky to have him as my first editor, and I learned such a lot from him. He was a brilliant editor, taking me through the book line-by-line, image-by-image, chapter-by-chapter, never pulling any punches (the first edit he insisted on involved cutting 40,000 words). I was going through a tough time in my day job in the mid-2000s, and my association with Ian and Granta felt like an antidote to that, a haven, the opposite of the malignant everyday. Ian was encouraging and critical, kind and insightful, and really seemed to care about the books and articles he oversaw. I visited him a few times in London to talk through the book and edits, and was welcomed into his house, where I have happy memories of sitting in his small walled garden, drinking beer and talking about my book, future plans - as well as memoirs, fathers, hobbies, beer, old-school sweets, trains, universities and so on. 

Ian seemed interested in everything, and he remains a model for me of editing and writing in that regard: an author is someone for whom nothing is uninteresting, nothing is "boring," who pays attention to the world; an author is someone for whom the small and apparently trivial or provincial have their own fascination; an author is someone who remembers what others forget; an author is someone who sees significance and connection in a world which is all-too-ready to throw things away, forget, conceal, or ignore them. As well as an editor, Ian was a unique and brilliant journalist, who understood the importance of memory, preservation and the interconnectedness of things. Rather than writing about "now" in isolation, his journalism is also about how that now connects with the past. This is surely the very best of journalism - to understand "now" in context, not as an isolated symptom. His wonderful book of essays The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain (2009) explores its subjects from four dimensions, connecting the personal and the political, the now with the then. Ian's work is the place, I think, where journalism and creative non-fiction meet - politically-informed, fascinating, wise, and beautifully written. 

I will miss Ian a lot, as will the writing world in general, which needs more enthusiasts like him. I feel sorry not to have seen him in the last few years. But I do feel very lucky to be able to count him as one of my mentors, and to think of myself as one of his many proteges. 

Will Buckingham, "Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World"

Will Buckingham is a writer originally from the UK, but now often found elsewhere in the world. He has written novels (The Descent of the Lyre, Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes), children’s books (Lucy and the Rocket Dog, The Snorgh and the Sailor) and nonfiction (Stealing With the Eyes: Imaginings and Incantations in Indonesia and Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World). He was formerly Associate Professor of Writing and Creativity at De Montfort University, and a visiting professor at the Parami Institute, Yangon, Myanmar. He is currently based in Bulgaria, where he co-directs Wind&Bones, a social enterprise exploring the meeting-places of writing, creativity and social change. His website is here.

About Hello, Stranger

When philosopher and traveller Will Buckingham’s partner died, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people. Now, as we reflect on our experiences of the pandemic and its enforced separations, and as global migration figures ever more prominently in our collective future, Buckingham brings together insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature to explore how our traditions of meeting the other can mitigate the issues of our time. Taking in stories of loneliness, exile and friendship from classical times to the modern day, and alighting in adapting communities from Birmingham to Myanmar, Hello, Stranger asks: how do we set aside our instinctive xenophobia – fear of outsiders – and embrace our equally natural philoxenia – love of strangers and newness?

From Hello, Stranger, by Will Buckingham

Today, in hotpot restaurants across the Chinese-speaking world, noisy groups of diners sit around shared, steaming pots of broth, and they drop vegetables, meat and seafood in bubbling liquid. As they do so, they cook up togetherness, that renao (literally: hot and noisy) warmth that is the stuff of life. The hotpot bubbles. The broth thickens. It takes up the flavours of the things the diners drop into it. It becomes thicker, richer, spicier. Fuchsia Dunlop writes, ‘There is something about the heat, the communal atmosphere and the diehard recklessness of eating so many chillies on a sweltering evening that is both hilarious and exhilarating.’ As one of her Chinese friends says to her, in the seethe and swirl of the bubbling liquid, hotpot ‘makes a person forget about their worries and grief.’

Hotpot is not a dish to eat alone: the whole point is that it is shared. With my new colleagues in Chengdu, I got hot and noisy. Clustered round, we fished with our chopsticks in the steaming pot of strange things – congealed blood, lotus roots, young bamboo shoots, unidentifiable animal parts, things plucked from the bottom of the sea. 

Occasionally, I pulled something mysterious and rubbery from the steaming broth and asked, ‘What is this?’ One of my new colleagues – a Kant scholar who carried an image of the Prussian philosopher in her purse, and who occasionally took it out to gaze at him in admiration – reprimanded me for my squeamishness, saying, ‘It is better not to ask. Better just to eat and to see if it is delicious.’ So I did. And it was. 

And at the end of the meal, when I reached into my pocket to pay, my new friends said no. ‘Women qing ke,’ they said. We invite you as a guest. 

I removed my hand from my pocket and thanked them. ‘Bie keqi,’ they said. Don’t take on the airs of a guest.