Raban

Jonathan Raban, who has died this week at the age of 80, was one of a generation of writers who helped to drag travel writing away from its hotel-reviewing, holiday-brochure corridor and into the halls of literature. Colin Thubron, Paul Theroux, Redmond O’Hanlon and Bruce Chatwin were among those (almost all men) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s resurrected the journey as one of the great narrative structures. They produced books that celebrate big ideas, remote places and the endless and ageless diversity of our…

Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist known for his candid accounts of travelling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting, has died aged 80, his agent has confirmed.Born in Norfolk in 1942, Raban grew up the son of an Anglican clergyman in several Church of England vicarages. The family had little income but several “upper-middle-class connections: coat-of-arms, one-time country house”. “We belonged nowhere,” he wrote in his 1986 book Coasting. “We had the money of one lot, the…