Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Mark Hamilton Priaulx Raban (14 June 1942 – 17 January 2023) was a British award-winning travel writer, playwright, critic and novelist.

Early life Jonathan Raban was born on 14 June 1942 in Norfolk. He was the son of Monica Raban (née Sandison) and the Rev Canon J. Peter C.P. Raban, whom he did not actually meet until he was three due to his father's military service in World War II. According to his distant cousin, Evelyn Waugh, in his autobiography A Little Learning, this branch of the Raban family were first recorded in the early 1500s as yeoman farmers in Penn, Staffordshire, before they moved to London in the early 1700s where they went into business and, subsequently, into the professions, Colonial Service, and the British Army. He was sent to boarding school at the age of five. Old Glory is set during the build-up to Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election, Coasting as the Falklands War begins, and Passage to Juneau as the failure of Raban’s marriage became apparent. with a “sharp portrait of a nation at war” during the Falklands conflict.

Raban's final work, a memoir documenting his stroke in 2011 including the long recovery process, as well as documenting his father's service as a British officer in World War II, was posthumously released in 2023.

Personal life Raban married three times, first to Bridget (Bridie) Johnson in 1964 whom he met at university; then to Caroline Cuthbert, an art dealer, in 1985; and finally to Jean Lenihan in 1992. All three marriages ended in divorce.

In 1973, Raban had a son, Alexander, by Amanda Reeve.

In 2011, Raban suffered a stroke which left him in a wheelchair. He died from related complications in Seattle on 17 January 2023, at the age of 80. The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the PEN West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and a 1997 Washington State Governor's Writer's Award. In 2003, his novel Waxwings was long listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Heinemann Award, 1982 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, 1981 and 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award, 1996 Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award (PNBA), 1997 PEN Center USA Award for Creative Nonfiction, 1997 The Stranger newspaper "Genius Awards", 2006 Article