Background
Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, raised in Prestwich, and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, before going on to study English at Downing College, Cambridge under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to England to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His later teaching posts included a period at Wolverhampton Polytechnic from 1974 to 1980.
Although Jacobson has described himself as "a Jewish Jane Austen" (in response to being described as "the English Phillip Roth"), he also states, "I'm not by any means conventionally Jewish. I don't go to shul. What I feel is that I have a Jewish mind, I have a Jewish intelligence. I feel linked to previous Jewish minds of the past. I don't know what kind of trouble this gets somebody into, a disputatious mind. What a Jew is has been made by the experience of 5,000 years, that's what shapes the Jewish sense of humour, that's what shaped Jewish pugnacity or tenaciousness." He maintains that "comedy is a very important part of what I do."
Jacobson's brother Stephen, born in 1946, is a noted artist who lives in Portishead, Somerset. Stephen Jacobson was the guitarist in both The Whirlwinds and The Mockingbirds, which were the precursors of 70s art rock band 10cc. In 1986 Howard Jacobson and wife Rosalin were the subject for one of Stephen's paintings.
In 2005 Jacobson was married for the third time, to radio and TV documentary maker Jenny De Yong "My last wife. I'm home, it's right".
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