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.
‘A unique and exhilarating exploration of time and love; Ian Marchant conspires with his diarist ancestor to bring to life the eccentricities and the importance of the early eighteenth century. Elegiac, consistently funny, deeply moving.’
RICHARD BEARD, AUTHOR OF SAD LITTLE MEN AND THE DAY THAT WENT MISSING
‘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
‘Bloody marvellous.’
NICHOLAS LEZARD, NEW STATESMAN
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‘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
