Jonathan Raban RIP

“The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”

Jonathan Raban, Soft City

Sad news recently of the passing of the travel writer and journalist Jonathan Raban.

In the Guardian he is described as having written some of the more interesting travel writing in recent years.

He grew up in Norfolk. I own several of his books including 'Passage to Juneau' and 'Driving Home'.

There is a famous moment in his book 'Coasting' - where he is travelling around Britain - when he bumps into the writer Paul Theroux.

They recognise each other and when chatting, they discover that they are both writing a book about travelling around the coast of the UK. Theroux's book is called 'The Kingdom by the Sea' and is worth reading, although it acts as a time capsule now due to the decades that have passed since it was written.

His book 'Soft City' is often described as an example of psychogeography.

He talks about his craft in this piece.

It is well worth engaging with Raban's work.