Mark Jones, whose work I edited at Albion for fourteen years, passed away unexpectedly on the 15th of June 2025 at the age of fifty-eight, depriving us of his extraordinary combination of brilliance, humour, lack of pretension, and good will.
He was a largely autodidact, deeply-read intellectual of the kind that is rare nowadays. Mark loved books, art, and history; The Beatles, Northern comedy, Williams Blake and Morris and other figures from the English Radical tradition; his cat Benny, Liverpool, the magazine, and his friends. Even when struggling with his own difficulties, he always had a listening ear and was full of empathy for others’ challenges.
Mark left school at sixteen with his O-Levels and initially worked in manual jobs, then moved into a successful civil service career (mostly at the Home Office) via his Open University foundation and MA courses, which he completed with distinction while working full-time. Although ill health forced him to take early retirement last year, he was still full of hopes and schemes for future editions of the magazine, as well as for a long-planned PhD in art history.
Mark’s witty and surprising turn of phrase was unforgettable. His style blended down-to-earth Mancunian colloquialism with lightly-held erudition, poignant and ineffable interludes, and flashes of hilarity to superb effect. These qualities were shown not only in his Albion work but also in his articles for other periodicals such as Slightly Foxed, The Fortnightly Review, the Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, the British Art Journal, and others. Each of his fifty-six articles for Albion was a gift, and it was a delight to edit his copy. Mark was extremely modest --bordering on diffident-- about his own work, and it was difficult to convince him otherwise. His talent was apparent to everyone else at the magazine, though, and his polymathic knowledge and range of interests are conveyed by the list of his articles for Albion (with links) below.
I would like in closing to thank the Open University, through which Mark not only gained the qualifications for his demanding career but also discovered the unique voice with which, year after year, he sang his extraordinary song in the pages of our magazine. I will miss Mark’s lively interest in all manner of subjects, his elegant writing, and his kind and deliberate way of talking. Most of all, however, I will miss his warm heart.--Isabel Taylor
A complete list of Mark Jones's Albion articles, from most recent to earliest:
