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Ian Jack

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the British academic, see Ian Jack (literary scholar). For the Australian historian, see R. Ian Jack.

Ian Jack
FRSL
Jack and Brigid Keenan at PalFest 2008
Born(1945-02-07)7 February 1945
Farnworth, Lancashire, England
Died28 October 2022(2022-10-28) (aged 77)
Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland
EducationDunfermline High School
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • editor
  • author
Years active1965–2022
Spouses
Aparna Bagchi
​
​
(m. 1979; div. 1992)​
Rosalind Sharpe
​
(m. 1998)​
Children2

Ian Grant Jack FRSL (7 February 1945 – 28 October 2022) was a British reporter, writer and editor. He edited the Independent on Sunday, the literary magazine Granta and wrote regularly for The Guardian.

Early life

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Jack was born in Farnworth, Lancashire, on 7 February 1945,[1] to parents who had migrated from Fife in 1930. Jack's mother, Isabella (née Gillespie), was born in Kirkcaldy and brought up in Hill of Beath,[2] and his father Henry was born in Dunfermline. The family returned to Scotland when he was seven years old, in 1952.[3][4] He grew up in North Queensferry and was educated there and at Dunfermline High School.[1]

Career

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After a false start as a would-be librarian,[5] Jack joined The Glasgow Herald as a trainee journalist in 1965.[3] After a short spell in its head office he was sent to work on two weekly papers in Lanarkshire, the now-defunct Cambuslang Advertiser and the East Kilbride News.[6] Later he worked for the Scottish Daily Express at its Glasgow offices.[7] In 1970, he joined The Sunday Times in London, where he became a section editor and then a foreign correspondent-cum-feature writer with a special interest in South Asia and particularly India, which he began to visit in the mid-1970s. From 1986 to 1989, he wrote for The Observer and Vanity Fair,[8] and then joined the team that created The Independent on Sunday, which he edited from 1991 to 1995.[9][10] His editorship of the quarterly Granta magazine, to which he had previously contributed as a writer, spanned 47 issues over twelve years to 2007.[11] While at Granta, Jack also commissioned and edited books by Diana Athill, Simon Gray, Janet Malcolm and Travis Elborough, among others. He contributed regularly to The Guardian from 2001, and began to write a weekly column for the paper six years later.[3][12] He occasionally taught at the India Institute, King's College London.[13]

In 2009, Jack published a collection of essays and previously unpublished writings entitled The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain.[14][15] One reviewer wrote of Jack's handling of time in this book: "He is up there with a fiction writer such as Alice Munro in his grasp of its ebb and flow, his awareness that its strong but rapidly changing currents often leave us wondering not only what we can remember, but what we should."[16] Alexander Chancellor called the book "superb", and added: "Collections of columns and newspaper articles are not usually a very good idea. They quickly become stale and dated, and one sometimes wonders what the point of them is except to deceive journalists into thinking that their ephemeral scribblings deserve some permanence. Jack is an exception to the rule."[17] The Economist wrote: "At the heart of the book are three magnificent essays, about the Hatfield train crash of 2000; the sinking of the Titanic and the film Titanic (1997); and the lost cinemas of Farnworth, Mr Jack's home town, which is also a circuitous epitaph for a lost brother. His contributions to 'this unequal struggle to preserve and remember' cumulatively transcend journalism and attain the status of literature."[18]

Jack's awards included Journalist of the Year (Granada TV's What the Papers Say award, 1985), Reporter of the Year (British Press Awards, 1988) and Editor of the Year (Newspaper Industry Awards, 1993). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[19]

In 2011, London's National Portrait Gallery purchased a portrait of Jack by photographer Denis Waugh for its permanent collection.[20]

Personal life and death

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Jack married Aparna Bagchi in 1979; the couple divorced in 1992.[3] He lived in Highbury, London,[21] with his second wife, Lindy Sharpe.[3] They had two children,[3] and spent a part of every year on the Isle of Bute in the Firth of Clyde.[22][23]

Jack's paternal grandmother was born in India[24] and lived with his grandfather in the now-demolished mining village of Lassodie, between Dunfermline and Kelty.[25][26]

Jack died in Paisley, Renfrewshire, on 28 October 2022, after a short illness, aged 77.[3]

Bibliography as author

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  • Jack, Ian (1987). Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain 1977–86. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-22020-2.
  • —— (2001). The Crash that Stopped Britain. London: Granta. ISBN 1-86207-468-2. (originally from Granta 73)
  • —— (2009). The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-08735-3.
  • —— (2013). Mofussil Junction. New Delhi: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-670-08644-3.

Bibliography as editor/contributor

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References

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  1. ^ a b "JACK, Ian Grant". Who's Who. Vol. 2022 (online ed.). A & C Black. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Jack, Ian (11 January 2011). The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain. Random House. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4464-4809-0. ...my mother moved to Hill of Beath aged 2 or 3 ...
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Sherwood, Harriet (29 October 2022). "Ian Jack, Guardian columnist and former Granta editor, dies aged 77". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  4. ^ Jack, Ian (10 September 2022). "They say the Queen was crowned in a different country. But some things in Britain never change". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
  5. ^ "Ian Jack". Booker Prize. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  6. ^ Jack, Ian (30 March 2019). "Amid the overalls and the flat caps, I found my voice in Cambuslang". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  7. ^ "The SRB Interview: Ian Jack". Scottish Review of Books. 14 October 2009. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  8. ^ Jack, Ian (7 May 1986). "Ian Jack". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  9. ^ Oliver Luft (28 November 2008). "Timeline: a history of the Independent newspapers – from City Road to Kensington via 'Reservoir Dogs' | Media". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  10. ^ "Ian Jack – Literature". Literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  11. ^ "Ian Jack". Granta. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  12. ^ "Ian Jack". The Guardian. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  13. ^ "King's College London Ian Jack". King's College London. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  14. ^ "Home". Randomhouse.co.uk. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  15. ^ Foden, Giles (2 October 2009). "The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain by Ian Jack | Book review". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  16. ^ Cooke, Rachel (6 September 2009). "The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain by Ian Jack". The Observer. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2010.
  17. ^ Chancellor, Alexander (9 September 2010). "A lost civilisation". Spectator Book Club. Archived from the original on 26 October 2009. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  18. ^ "Goodbye to all that". The Economist. 10 September 2009. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  19. ^ RSL Fellows (16 March 2016). "Royal Society of Literature » Current RSL Fellows". Rsliterature.org. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  20. ^ "NPG x134847; Ian Jack - portrait". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  21. ^ Finch, Emily (12 October 2018). "Blackstock Road plaque honours origins of worldwide peace symbol". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  22. ^ Jack, Ian (10 September 2005). "The big Mac story". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  23. ^ Chancellor, Alexander (27 August 2011). "Diary – Alexander Chancellor". The Spectator. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  24. ^ Jack, Ian (11 January 2011). "Cousin Walter". The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain. Random House. p. 253. ISBN 978-1-4464-4809-0. My great grandfather Birmingham was an Irishman (nobody knew from where, or of what religion) who joined the Royal Artillery and went to India, where most of his children were born, including my father's mother
  25. ^ Jack, Ian (16 October 2016). "16/10/2016, Good Morning Scotland – BBC Radio Scotland". Good Morning Scotland (Interview). Interviewed by Gordon Brewer. BBC Radio Scotland. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
  26. ^ Jack, Ian (11 November 2011). "We know the terrible legacy of our love of fossil fuels. But will it stop us? No chance". The Guardian.
  27. ^ Athill, Diana (7 October 2010). "Life Class | What's New". Granta Books. Archived from the original on 19 January 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  28. ^ "The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Nirad C. Chaudhuri – New York Review Books". Nyrb.com. 30 September 2001. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  29. ^ "Granta 130: India - Granta Magazine". Granta. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  30. ^ Jack, Ian, ed. (2004). The Granta Book of India (9781862077843): Ian Jack: Books. Granta. ISBN 1862077843.
  31. ^ Jack, Ian (1998). The Granta Book of Reportage: Ian Jack: 9781862071933: Amazon.com: Books. Granta Books. ISBN 1862071934.
  32. ^ Ian Jack (Introduction) (1998). The Granta Book of Travel (Import): Ian Jack: 9781862071100: Amazon.com: Books. Granta Books. ISBN 1862071101.
  33. ^ Malcolm, Janet. "The Journalist and the Murderer | What's New". Granta Books. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  34. ^ Jack, Ian (1987). Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain, 1976–86. Secker & Warburg.
[edit]
Media offices
Preceded by Editor of The Independent on Sunday
1991–1995 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Editor of Granta
1995–2007 		Succeeded by
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