Ian Marchant – författare

‘My book of the year. Extraordinary’ The TimesA new history of counterculture in the UK, from the release of Heartbreak Hotel in 1956 to the passing of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994Deep in a wood in the Marches of Wales, in an ancient school bus there lives an old man called Bob Rowberry. A Hero for High Times is the story of how he ended up in this broken-down bus. It's also the story of his times, and the ideas that shaped him. It's a story of why you know your birth sign, why you have friends called Willow, why sex and drugs and rock’n’roll once mattered more than money, why dance music stopped the New-Age Travellers from travelling, and why you need to think twice before taking the brown acid.It’s also a story of friendship between two men, one who did things, and one who thought about things, between theory and practice, between a hippie and a punk, between two gentlemen, no longer in the first flush of youth, who still believe in love.‘This amiable and engaging blog-doc is an Odyssey for elective outsiders’ Iain Sinclair, Guardian

_________________‘Compelling... Part Bill Bryson, part Nick Hornby, part memoir and part pastiche ... Light, lively and, above all, right: what every enthusiast should be expected to know' - The Times‘Michael Palin meets Nick Hornby meets What the Victorians Did for Us ... wacky and amiable' - Independent on Sunday‘A gloriously disingenuous front for the most acerbic and humorous criticism of public transport policy ... a more entertaining and incisive read will not be found this year' - Glasgow Herald_________________A brilliantly witty story of one man's encounter with the British railwaysFor 175 years the British have lived with the railway, and for a long while it was a love affair - the grandeur of the Victorian heyday, the glorious age of steam, the romance of Brief Encounter. Then the love affair turned sour - strikes, bad food, delays, disasters...Parallel Lines tells the story of these two railways: the real railway and the railway of our dreams. Travelling all over Britain, Ian Marchant examines the history of the British railway and meets those who still hold the railways close to their hearts - the model railway enthusiasts, the train-spotters and bashers (a hybrid of train-spotting where the individual - usually male - has to travel behind a certain locomotive in order to catalogue it), the steam enthusiasts. He swaps stories with commuters at the far reaches of London suburbia, he travels to deserted railway museums, and smokes cigarettes on remote, windswept stations in the furthest corners of Scotland, turning his characteristic eye for character, humour and surprise to one of the great shared experiences of the British nation._________________‘The trip keeps its pace and purpose, fuelled by the genial, flexible rhythms of the prose and enriched by two centuries of railway-culture hinterland' - Independent

In 2004 Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, asked if the countryside is guilty of a 'passive apartheid'.White Open Spaces is a Pentabus Theatre development project undertaken in partnership with BBC Radio Drama. Nine Writers were invited to take part in a residential week in Shropshire.The plays published in this volume are by Francesca Beard, Sonali Bhattacharyya, Ian Marchant, Kara Miller, Courttia Newland, Richard Rai O'Neil, and Rommi Smith.White Open Spaces was taken on a regional tour, including a run at the Pleasance’s King Dome at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006.

'Bloody marvellous' Nicholas Lezard, New Statesman'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 MenOne day Ian Marchant, acclaimed author of books on music, railways and pubs, decided, as all men of a certain age must, to have a dig around his family history. Surprisingly quickly, a web search informed him that his seven-times-great great-grandfather, Thomas Marchant had left a detailed diary from 1714 to 1728. So far, so jolly...Life-loving diarist Thom - who liked a drink and a game of cards - feels recognisably Marchant to Ian. With fascinating detail we learn about Thom's family farm and fishponds; about dung, horses and mud; about beer, the wife's nights out, his own job troubles and their shared worries for their children. But as Ian digs deeper beyond the Sussex diary's bucolic portrait he discovers a subtext - a family descended from immigrants, with anti-establishment politics, who are struggling with illness, political instability and cash crises - just as their country does three centuries on.