ian marchant

Born a week before Elvis joined the Army, Ian Marchant is originally from Newhaven in East Sussex, and now lives with his family in neither England, nor Wales, but Radnorshire.

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In the 1980’s, he sang in various unimaginably obscure bands, wrote up the results of horse races in bookmakers’ shops, and sold second-hand records and smoker’s requisites on Llandrindod market. In the 1990’s he lived in a caravan next to Sunnyside Lane Allotments, Lancaster, with a chicken called Ginger. Here he wrote his novels ‘In Southern Waters’ and ‘The Battle for Dole Acre’

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In the 21st Century he has run a large second-hand bookshop on the Charing Cross Road, been Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton, and worked as a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University.

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Hi latest book, ‘A Hero for High Times’, has just benn published This is the funny sad and true  story of Ian Marchant's friendship with hardcore hippy Bob: Rowberry: the story of how Bob ended up living in a broken-down school bus deep in a wood in the Marches of Wales. It's also the story of his times, and the ideas that shaped him. It's a story of why you know your birth sign, why you have friends called Willow, why sex and drugs and rock’n’roll once mattered more than money, why dance music stopped the New-Age Travellers from travelling, and why you need to think twice before taking the brown acid.

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Arwr o Oes Benfeddwol

Yn ei lyfr newydd, A Hero for High Times, mae Ian Marchant yn olrhain stori ddoniol, drist a gwir ei gyfeillgarwch gyda Bob Rowberry - hipi digyfaddawd.

Stori yw hon am: pam eich bod chi’n cofio’ch arwydd geni, pam fod gyda chi ffrindiau o’r enw Willow, pam, ar un adeg, ro’dd rhyw, cyffuriau a roc n rol yn bwysicach nag arian, pam y gwnaeth cerddoriaeth ddawns stopio teithwyr Oes Newydd rhag teithio, a pham bod angen i chi feddwl ddwywaith cyn cymryd yr asid brown.