A renowned writer and broadcaster has died at the age of 67.
Ian Marchant, who grew up in Newhaven, died on Friday, November 14 at St Michael's hospice in Hereford after several years of living with prostate cancer.
Marchant authored eleven books over the course of his life. He was best known for his non-fiction—mainly travel writing and memoir—but also penned novels and short stories.
Ian was born in Shalford, Surrey, but moved to Newhaven at the age of nine. He grew up in Newhaven and attended Newhaven Tideway School, now Seahaven Academy, from 1969 until 1976.
In 1976, he started a degree at St David's University College in Lampeter and moved back to Brighton in 1979 where he soon became a “stalwart of the Brighton music scene”.
He was a life-long Brighton and Hove Albion fan.
Martin Sinnock, who lived in Brighton at the same time as Marchant, said:
“I remember him hanging around places like The Cottage coffee bar, a hippy establishment, and a couple of underground bookshops in Brighton.
“Ian was a few years younger than me, so I didn't know him very well, but I remember him as a very tall and lanky kid with a lot of enthusiasm.”
He made programmes for BBC Radio and was a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University.
He wrote for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, The Times, The Sunday Times and Metro and was a regular diarist for the Church Times.
He made numerous appearances as a guest speaker, compere, quizmaster and lounge singer at various festivals, including the Chalke Valley History Festival, Hay Literature Festival, Glastonbury and the Green Man Festival.
His genre-breaking books often blended memoir with cultural and social history, philosophy and elements of fiction and fantasia.
Nicholas Lezard, for The Guardian, wrote that Marchant has “a way of telling a story, a pleasing tone, and a way of shoving in a lot of information - and philosophy, too, at one point - without a trace of lecturing”.
Parallel Lines (2003), which examined the history of the British railway, and The Longest Crawl (2006), which documented a month-long pub crawl the length of the country, were both published by Bloomsbury and both selected as paperback of the week in The Guardian.
A Hero for High Times (2018), a chronicle of alternative lifestyles since the 1950s, was long listed for the Gordon Burns Prize in 2018.
One Fine Day (2022) was a response to the diary of his seven times great-great grandfather, a yeoman Thomas Marchant, who lived in Hurstpierpoint. The Financial Times described the book as “not just a history” but a “sensitive portrait of two men, each of whom embellishes the other”.
His final book, a novel called The breaking wave, is set in and around Brighton and draws on his personal experience of Brighton music and bands in the 1980s and his struggle with the prostate cancer which finally killed him.
A special advance limited edition was published in September, but this is not yet available on general release.
In his final weeks he wrote regularly for his Substack about his life and approaching death:
“Tough, sometimes brutal, but always poignant and funny,” said his friend Richard Jones.
Richard met Ian at school and they used to walk to school together with their friend, David Hibling.
“We each had a passion. I was interested in insects, David wanted to join the circus, and Ian wanted to be in a rock band,” he said.
“We each found our calling. I now study and write about insects. David is creative director of Zippo's Circus. Ian made a life of writing, performing, acting, and singing. He often reminisced about how lucky we three had been to achieve our boyhood goals.”
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