Dr Catherine Fox writes:
THERE’s a bookmark part-way through my copy of Ian Marchant’s last novel. It captures what I’m feeling.
I was only part-way through my long conversation with Ian. I met him about 20 years ago, when he was a centre director at the Arvon Foundation. He struck me as a big man: big and tall, big black-framed glasses, big bald head, big laugh. That laugh. A huge PA-HAH-HAH! that made pigeons scatter. I can’t believe that I won’t be hearing it again. His family seemed big to me, too, with all the loves and losses, partners, children, stepchildren, grandchildren.
As I read accounts of Ian’s life and achievements, I realise that I benefited from only a few paragraphs of the Ian Marchant volume. Born in Shalford, Surrey, in 1958, Ian grew up in Newhaven, went to the local comprehensive, and from there to Lampeter University. He left to form a band, eventually returning to education in 1990 to finish his degree.
He was a novelist, memoirist, teacher, musician, comedian, columnist for the Church Times, broadcaster. I knew this in snippets only, but it confirms my instinct that there was nothing small about him. He was big-hearted and large-minded. His interests were voluminous and fuelled by pleasurable curiosity, which resulted in an encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything. I don’t know why this wasn’t annoying. He was definitely a man to have on your pub quiz team.
Ian was a man of faith: an Anglican, of all things. I sensed his growing surprise about this over the years, as he found himself homing in on the good old C of E after his pub-crawling pilgrimage through the highways and byways of counterculture. He never fitted the conventional mould. In one glorious week, he had a book favourably mentioned in The Church of England Newspaper and in the News of the World. Above all, he showed what it looked like to explore faith without fear, and to speak of his experiences of God without embarrassment.
Ian died. aged 67, of prostate cancer after a long illness on 14 November. I will finish The Breaking Wave, but not yet. I can hear his voice as I read, and I don’t want this story to be over. Yet, faith tells me that there is more to come. What we shall be has yet to be revealed. Maybe by the time we join him, Ian will able to fill us in on the symbolism of the chalcedony foundation of the heavenly city, explain why sin is behovely and yet all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. We may get to hear an angel-scattering guffaw in the new haven where he is now safely moored.
Ian is survived by his wife, Hilary, his daughters, Esme and Eleanor, two stepdaughters, Victoria and Stephanie, and four grandchildren, Cordelia, Aurelia, Rafael, and Miguel.