Ian Hamilton

Hamilton,-Ian,-Author

(Robert)Ian Hamilton was born on March 24th 1938, the second son of Robert Tough and Daisy (McKay) Hamilton, who had left their native Glasgow in 1936, and were then living in King’s Lynn.
In 1951, the family – now increased by the arrival of another son and daughter – moved from Norfolk to Co. Durham, settling in Darlington. Hamilton was sent to the local grammar school, and it was there, during his last year, that he launched his first literary magazine. Although it only ran to two issues, and he later made light of the thing – claiming that it consisted of little more than letters of refusal from the well-known figures he’d asked to contribute – The Scorpion demonstrated not only its seventeen-year-old editor’s precocity but also his persuasiveness, for amongst the people who didn’t refuse him were some of the period’s leading men of letters. Hamilton took his university entrance examination in 1955 and was offered a place to read English at Keble College, Oxford. Entry had to be deferred for two years while he did National Service, but when, in 1958, he did go up to Keble, he quickly established a name for himself, at least among those who took writing seriously. Within a year of his arrival, he had launched a new literary magazine, Tomorrow. This may have started out a little uncertainly – ‘with lashings of Michael Horovitz and thin jests from the 21-year-old Roger McGough’, as John Fuller recently remarked – but by the time of its third and fourth issues, it was looking a lot more confident, and a lot more interesting. Issue no. 4 had contributions from Christopher Middleton, Thomas Blackburn, Alan Brownjohn and others. It also featured the script of an early play by Harold Pinter, the first time this had appeared in print.

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Books by Ian Hamilton