A smooth passage

Jonathan Raban left Britain and moved to Seattle in 1990, when he was 47. He sold his Volkswagen on his way to Heathrow airport. He bought a Dodge with Washington state plates the next day, and in this second-hand car he would, over the years, travel through and write about his new country. ‘The Pacific Northwest continues to be a magnet — the strongest regional magnet in the country, I would guess — for hopefuls and newlifers of every imaginable cast,’ Raban wrote in the summer of 1993, in a piece that’s now republished in Driving Home:

It feels like the last surviving corner of the United States to be widely promoted … as the one green spot in the moral sand-waste of the world. People like to think of themselves as undergoing not mere relocation but full- blown resurrection here in the smoke- and cholesterol-free city of Seattle, where eternal life is thought to be a viable alternative to two packs a day.

In Driving Home, you can follow Raban’s progress: in 1990, he was an immigrant living with his new American wife in a rented apartment with furniture bought at garage sales. Two decades later and Raban has more than simply settled in. He is a much sought after writer and commentator on the American political scene. There are pieces on George Bush and the war on terror, and how that campaign was pursued on the American domestic front. There are pieces on Bill Clinton and Obama. There are several on sailing, one of Raban’s major and constant preoccupations. Raban had owned a boat when he lived in Britain, which he moored on the Blackwater estuary in Essex. He bought another boat in Seattle, a 35-foot ketch.