SOURCE: Porter, Peter. “Remembering Ian Hamilton, 1938-2001.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5155 (18 January 2002): 19.

In the following obituary, Porter asserts that Hamilton was both “the best judge of writing” in England and “the master stylist of our age.”

When a gifted writer, who is also a friend, dies, mourning has to be shared between personal feeling and the need to contribute something to the public tribute. Being unable to ring Ian Hamilton to fix a lunch date or to discuss some literary crisis or other, is only the beginning of the missingness. From now on we won't read anything new by the best judge of writing in this country—worse still, the master stylist of our age won't be around to redeem the pages of our journals by demonstrating that prose can be crafted as surely as poetry. An authority, one to be taken as a touchstone whether you agree...