Ian Marchant
Ian Marchant
Memoir | Social History
Ian Marchant has worked for twenty-five years as a writer, broadcaster and performer. His non-fiction books include Parallel Lines, The Longest Crawl, A Hero for High Times, which was long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, and now One Fine Day. Ian has presented numerous broadcasts for Radio 3 and Radio 4, in particular on psycho-geography and contemporary rural affairs. He is an intermittent presenter on Radio 4’s long-running Open Country, and a regular diarist for the Church Times. He has written for the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. He has made numerous appearances as a guest speaker, compere, quizmaster and lounge singer, and is also a creative writing tutor and guest speaker for the Arvon Foundation. He lives in Presteigne with his family.
‘This book is too engaging, in both senses of the world, to be anything but loved. [Marchant] throws a rope to the past and lets it each us things we would do well to remember. Neighbourliness; civic virtue; decency in the form of honesty. This book is wonderful.’
The Oldie
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? MAGAZINE
‘Bloody marvellous.’
NICHOLAS LEZARD, NEW STATESMAN
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RICHARD BEARD, AUTHOR OF SAD LITTLE MEN AND THE DAY THAT WENT MISSING
‘Marchant is infectiously curious and impetuous … a delightful thing.’
The Financial Times
‘I enjoyed it hugely, and was strangely moved. By bringing his long-ago ancestors to life, Ian Marchant has done a rather miraculous thing – we feel his family stretching out their hand from the depths of the past, and drawing us in. It’s wide-ranging, informative and often very funny.’
Deborah Moggach, author of The Black Dress
‘Original and entertaining.’
Daily Mail
‘Ian Marchant is one of England’s most original writers. One Fine Day is a masterwork, a rich plum pudding of a story which enfolds the ingredients of a personal quest, the story of a hybrid family identity, of our industrial history and our current political mess. Marchant is frequently very funny and also deadly serious … weaving together a forgotten past with not just his own life, but that of a nation. Not often do writers get to pull off such a masterly leap from the specific to the universal. Marchant has written a book everyone should read, a complex, joyful, polyglot of a book for our troubled times.’
MONIQUE ROFFEY, AUTHOR OF THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH
‘Deeply enchanting and fully fanged … Marchant’s book made me laugh out loud in many places. He also moved me to tears. A joy to read.’
Church Times
‘One very fine book.’
