Jonathan Raban, travel writer and novelist, dies aged 80

The British author, who lived in the US, blended memoir and travelogue in books that were often inspired by the sea

Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist known for his candid accounts of travelling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting, has died aged 80, his agent has confirmed.

Born in Norfolk in 1942, Raban grew up the son of an Anglican clergyman in several Church of England vicarages. The family had little income but several “upper-middle-class connections: coat-of-arms, one-time country house”. “We belonged nowhere,” he wrote in his 1986 book Coasting. “We had the money of one lot, the voices of another – and we had an unearthly goodliness which removed us from the social map altogether.”