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Family & Education

Jonny Zucker: 'He made you feel golden'

Children's author Jonny Zucker took his own life last year. Anne Joseph talked to his wife about a new initiative in his memory

September 28, 2017 11:38
Jonny Zucker

ByAnne Joseph, Anne Joseph

5 min read

Fiona Starr’s bright and welcoming Muswell Hill kitchen is the hub of an obviously busy family life. Camping chairs and a yoga mat are stacked up on the floor next to the dog’s bed, the clothes horse is pegged full, and fixed to a cupboard door a calendar bursts with detailed plans.

There is little among this domestic normality to indicate that 10 months ago, the household was shattered by tragedy.

Shortly before his 50th birthday, Jonny Zucker, Fiona’s husband and father to their three sons, took his own life. They had been together for 25 years. His death caused shockwaves and immense sorrow to those people whose lives he had touched but the biggest trauma and devastation of all was, of course, within his own family.

“The way I describe him to people who didn’t know him,” explains Starr, “is that he was a bit like Robin Williams but from north London, in that he was so funny, so charismatic. He made people feel special, like they were his best friends. Jonny had this capacity to make people feel as if they were shining, like they were golden. Everyone says that.” I nod in agreement. Jonny had been one of my closest friends since we had met in Habonim-Dror in our late teens. And Fiona and I are old friends since childhood.