global warming article - From student rag to literary riches (Guardian Unlimited)

Launched in 1979 under the inspired 'lunacy' of Bill Buford, Granta magazine became the home of vital new writing and launched the careers of some of our greatest novelists. Afew minutes after lunching with Ian Jack, who departed as editor of Granta earlier this year after 12 years and 48 issues, I dropped into Quinto, the second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Granta was about to celebrate its 100th edition, and I wanted some early copies - those classic ones with writing by Richard Ford, John Berger, Martin Amis and Angela Carter. The influence of the travel writing issue far exceeded its sales, which remained in the low thousands in the first few years, and only took off when Buford grasped the value of selling the magazine in the United States (although to some extent Granta's influence on both readers and writers has remained greater than its commercial success; it has always tended to sell to an influential literary elite, less snobbish than the maligned Hampstead set but perhaps no less self-contained). Ian Jack left Granta in June, some 18 months after Rea Hederman sold the magazine to Sigrid Rausing, the London-based publisher and philanthropist, whose vast family fortune derives from the Tetra packaging industry. He speaks of Granta having an invigorating presence online, of authors updating their stories and occasionally chatting to their readers, and the possibilities of Granta moderating an intellectual/literary salon, of a Granta prize and even a Granta festival. read more

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