D.A.N. Jones

David Arthur Nicholas Jones (16 April 1931 – 23 November 2002), known as D.A.N. Jones, was a British novelist and journalist, theatre and literature critic. He wrote two novels, Never Had It So Good and Parade in Pairs (1963). He was part of the original editorial team at The Black Dwarf, wrote for Tribune and the New Statesman, before becoming a columnist for The Listener and a regular in The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He was a lifelong socialist, and campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Early life and education Born in Wandsworth, London, he attended Bec Grammar School (later to be Ernest Bevin Comprehensive, and then Academy). He attended Balliol College, Oxford, having won an exhibition, in 1951.

Life and work Jones did National Service in Hong Kong, then began to work as a reporter on the Oxford Mail.

Other oddities saw Jones interviewing Robert Maxwell, owner of the Mirror Newspaper Group, on television, shortly before Maxwell's death by drowning, and being invited to meet Saddam Hussein in Iraq for a "writer's conference", where he was to lay a wreath for the Unknown Soldier "on Britain's behalf". Jones was presented with a watch by Saddam featuring Saddam's face.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Jones became a "significant voice in the London literary journalism", described at his death as being "among the outstanding British intellectual journalists of the past 40 years" until a series of strokes, and mental health issues, led to an early retirement, first to the Sussex coast, and then to Woodstock, Oxon.

He died in a house fire in Woodstock in November 2002.

Publications Never Had It So Good (Jonathan Cape, 1958), novel Parade in Pairs (Jonathan Cape, 1963), novel