Ian Marchant will be talking about his work in publishing and broadcasting, and reading from his new book about Sussex, ‘One Fine Day.’ He’ll be talking about Newhaven’s very big memorial to the Father of Modern History, why students in the 1960’s chanted the name of a pastry cook on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry, and how Newhaven’s third railway station launched a thousand YouTube channels.
His book will be available for sale as well as drinks.
Ian Marchant is originally from Newhaven in East Sussex, and now lives with his family on the Welsh Marches.
In the 1980’s, he sang in Newhaven bands The National Game and the Mood Index. In the 1990’s he lived in a caravan next to Sunnyside Lane Allotments, Lancaster, with a chicken called Ginger. Here he wrote his novels ‘In Southern Waters’ and ‘The Battle for Dole Acre’
In the 21st Century he has run a large second-hand bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, been Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton, and worked as a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University.
His books include ‘Parallel Lines’, ‘The Longest Crawl’ (a journey between the UK’s most distant pubs), ‘Something of the Night’, and ‘A Hero for High Times’, the story of Britain’s counter-culture, and what it was like to grow up a rock-obsessed boy in Newhaven. His latest book is ‘One Fine Day,’ which is about the discovery of a diary kept by Ian’s 8xgreat-grandfather in Hurstpierpoint between 1714 and 1728.
For Radio Four, Ian has presented documentaries about talking trees, scary buses, ghost trains, the self-service nation and the history of barbed wire, and the North/South divide, A regular presenter on Radio Four’s ‘Open Country’, Ian has presented programmes on living off grid, new ways to look at home, the arrival of politics on the Isle of Gigha, how to take an alpaca for a walk, where the UK’s spaceport should be located, the disappearance of the Sussex iron Industry, why drains matter, what it means for a landscape to be ‘National’, how to find the source of a river, and where the first traffic jam in the UK took place.
He has written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, The Times, The Sunday Times and Metro. He is a regular diarist for the Church Times.
Ian has made numerous appearances as a guest speaker, compère, quiz-master and lounge singer at various festivals, including Glastonbury, Latitude, Port Eliot, End of the Road, Chalke Valley History Festival, Hay Literature Festival, Ways With Words at Dartington, Words by the Water at Keswick, Green Man Festival, Stoke Newington Literary Festival, tEXt in Exeter, Ilkley Literature Festival, Hebden Bridge Arts Festival, Lancaster Litfest, Secret Garden Party, Wilderness, Eden, The Green Gathering, and Abergavenny Food Festival.