Granta 58

This collection of essays features the theme of what people wanted as children. The contributing writers include: Doris Lessing, Paul Auster, Brian MacKinnon and Nell Stroud. There are also pieces by George Steiner, J.M. Coetzee, Joyce Carol Oates, John Biguenet and Peter Walker.

Ian Jack edited Granta from 1995 to 2007, having previously edited the Independent on Sunday. He has written on many subjects, including the Titanic, Kathleen Ferrier, the Hatfield train crash and the three members of the IRA active-service unit who were killed on Gibraltar. He is the editor of The Granta Book of Reportage and The Granta Book of India, and the author of a collection of journalism, The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain. He is working, not very quickly, on a book about the River Clyde.