Granta 60

You're not serious... Please God, no... I don't believe it. We think we like surprises. Shocks, on the other hand, are harder to accept.
We lose people. Bad luck, bad judgement, bad habits; fate. They die, they change, they disappear; and sometimes there's a public fuss and sometimes not. Always there are questions (though the answers rarely make a difference). Why did he die? Why did I live? Was the driver drunk? Was the car going too fast? What was she doing there in the first place? Above all: why me?

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.