A Writer's World

by Jan Morris

In a hugely evocative collection of her travel writing and reportage from five decades, Jan Morris has produced a unique portrait of the late twentieth century world. Ranging from New York to Venice, Oxford to the Middle East, and Wales to South Africa, Jan Morris was a witness to such seminal moments as the Eichmann trial, the first ascent of Everest, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the handover of Hong Kong. And, as ever, she displays her unique and inimitable literary style, at once funny, wise and sad.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Essays, Memoir, Biography, Geography

Paperback

First published November 17, 2003

About the author

Jan Morris was a British historian, author and travel writer. Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but is Welsh by heritage and adoption. Before 1970 Morris published under her assigned birth name, "James ", and is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City, and also wrote about Wales, Spanish history, and culture.

In 1949 Jan Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter. Morris and Tuckniss had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy. As Morris documented in her memoir Conundrum, she began taking oestrogens to feminise her body in 1964. In 1972, she had sex reassignment surgery in Morocco. Sex reassignment surgeon Georges Burou did the surgery, since doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and Tuckniss divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time. They divorced later, but remained together and later got a civil union. On May, 14th, 2008, Morris and Tuckniss remarried each other. Morris lived mostly in Wales, where her parents were from.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest travel-writer ever, in full, expansive literary flow.
If you're a traveller or a tourist, this can only enhance your experience mightily. If you're an armchair traveller, it'll save you a fortune in airfares and hotels, and you'll still be able to bang on at length and in detail about all the places you've 'been'.

[Deon · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like to travel, or read about traveling, this is a wonderful book! Jan Morris has been everywhere, she has written beautifully about her travels in many, many books. This book condenses the stories into vignettes of those trips. From accompanying Edmund Hillary on the first successful summiting of Mount Everest to strolling in Venice, Morris explores a variety of experiences and settings. Kyoto, Cape Town, Jerusalem, Atlanta, Addis Ababa, and on into so many marvelous places to intrigue fellow travelers.

[Mindie Burgoyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a pleasure to have so much of Jan Morris' work in one work. her insights on Europe post WWII as well as in the eighties was fabulous. I love her work, however I must keep a dictionary close by. I rarely find a writer with such a command of the English language and a use of wide vocabulary that doesn't seemed forced or ostentatious.

I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys literary travel writing.

[Peter Ellwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magic. This is what all travel books ought to be like: insightful, witty, informative. Again and again, Jan Morris manages to spot the tiny detail – the one that you or I probably wouldn’t have noticed - that somehow draws out the essence of a place and that makes you think “ah yes, that’s what it’s like”.. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit one or two of the places described in this marvellous book: and in every case, I recognised what she says: the smells, the taste, the texture of the place. She captures it perfectly.

If you’re anything like me, you might well also be reading it because you know what Jan Morris and her sumptuous command of English can achieve. She could describe people queuing for milk and still make it sound riveting and enriching. This collection of essays is of further interest in that department too, in that it demonstrates the development of that prose style, from early beginnings in the 1950s, to full blossoming by the 1990s. In addition to the intrinsic interest and insight of what she describes then, there is also something akin to the pleasure of watching a beautiful flower unfurl.

Out of hundreds of possible examples I give just two that catch my eye.

Of an Ethiopian trader, measuring out millet grains:

He smiled when he noticed me, the thin quiver of a smile, and as he did so he slammed the lock of his scales with a gesture terribly final, as though he had ordered the instant expulsion of the Jesuits, or had just beheaded his grandfather.

Of Aussie drovers in Alice Springs:

These are Australians as you have always imagined them. I do not believe stronger or more likeable men walk the earth today, so calm and imperturbable are their manners, so infectious their kindly humour, so gauntly handsome their physiques. [..] they rest there like princes among their beasts, people of an enviable fulfilment, Australians to the manner born.

One of her armoury of stylistic tools in the middle years is to present the reader with lists. In other hands this might be boring. But somehow, in context, it sums up all the style and elegant swagger of her writing. Hesitantly therefore (because I’m taking it out of that context) I give an example, in this case of London:

It is a city of terrific murders and innumerable spies, of novelists, auctioneers, surgeons and rock stars. It is the city of Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Dr Johnson, Churchill, Dick Whittington, Henry VIII, Florence Nightingale, the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, Gladstone and the two Olivers, Cromwell and Twist.

The piece on London, which she deprecates as being a bit of a period piece, is by the way a masterpiece of travel writing. At the end she observes that much has now changed, as indeed it has. But the essence, which she captures so triumphantly, is still very much visible. It is worth buying the book just to get this essay!

Inevitably there will be favourites and not-so-favourite essays, as we all like to have our own favourite places praised. But from beginning to end, her eye for the killer point, and above all, her use of language: make this book a real delight. The prose reminds me of a joint of perfectly cooked beef – rich, easy to digest, and utterly juicy. Actually, given her own beliefs I suppose that ought to be a best shoulder of Welsh lamb. But either way - not to be missed.

[Bri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange mixture of gems and casual, unreconstructed racisms from fifty or sixty years ago that make your breath catch in shock. I think not having a sensitivity reader check this over with modern eyes was a mistake.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

As she notes in her typically astute and lively introduction, this anthology's more a performance of her career of fifty years, rather perfectly bookending the span from age twenty-four to seventy-four. And she confesses that as time goes on, her verve may diminish and her enthusiasms turn sedate. All true, but this slow segue into her dignified retreat from an increasingly unhinged globalizing, digital rather than "real-life" mediated, and corporate-dominated groupthink and imposed monoculture all bode poorly. It's not accidental: she concludes her sober afterword on September 10, 2001, tellingly. Her faith in human goodness, as with many of us, faces harsh truths.

She intersperses her recollections after the facts she chooses from her varied essays (rather than her thirty-odd books of often equally deserving renown) as she goes on assignment for the Guardian, the Times of London, among other august--if often bent on a certain knowing voice from a particular strain of British right-thinking, or rather left-leaning, sensibility. As a Welsh republican fascinated by the Empire, if inevitably unable to fall for its seductions, she's ideally placed to track its postwar ebb. She pinpoints this to the fall of Singapore, 1942, and follows it up to the (in retrospect a mistake, I wonder, given the failure of the Yellow Umbrella 2010's protests) end of Crown Rule over Hong Kong. Her sex change in 1974 gets wittily told, although it might have been terrible. Like so many encounters in this collection, her aplomb and commonsense shine here.

The pace did noticeably slacken halfway. As a native Angeleno, judging her take in 1975, when she accurately measures that already it's in decline from a mid-century Hollywood, can-do optimism, is correct. But she dallies too long in the usual Westside haunts of those enamored by the movies and celebrities, which after all, contrasted with (by now 25) millions across Southern California, does reveal a professional flaw of a travel journalist who talks to her own, and reports what she thinks her audience, and her editors, expect her to file as to copy. But this is a small flaw among gems.

At least in the first part. She tends to offer shorter, atmospheric pieces, and the impressionistic air of their accumulation thins their atmosphere. Still, in the majority, treasures emerge, insights pop up, and she's skilled at summing up the foibles of the immigrants, natives, and transients all over.

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compilation was enough to make her my favorite travel writer. I respect the balance she's able to maintain between objective/subjective, awe/critique, deep/superficial, and all written with an surprisingly wide array of vocabulary (a dictionary was needed at least a few times for each of her pieces to find esoteric words used not to be fancy, but to be precise).

She lived an incredible life (part of the first expedition to scale Mt. Everest for a start) and wrote about where she was incredibly well. I highly recommend this collection for anyone interested in travel, cities, countries and the people and cultures that comprise them. Learning to adopt her perspective will help me more deeply appreciate the places I go to live and visit in the future.

[Mischa KK Bagley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best travel writer of the latter half of the 20th century.

[Jerry-Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am an armchair traveler. Thus, I love to visit other countries with a seasoned guide like Jan Morris. Since this covers 50 years of travel, some of the articles are dated. Nonetheless, a fun read. I place this alongside by other favorite travel writers Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson.

[Bonnie Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost gave this book five stars—wish I could give it 4.5! What a journey through time and space. Morris is a master of conveying a sense of place, as well as the contradictory feelings we humans experience as we try to make sense of our experiences.

[Hadley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is almost certainly the best travel book I've read.
It's an extensive collection of previously-published essays, often accompanied by brief commentary by the author, which span five decades and six continents. They range from notable historical journalism to descriptions of quirky vacation spots, but everything is wonderfully written. Morris really knew how encapsulate a place.
The title isn't very accurate; there's neither much autobiographical detail nor many minutiae of trips. (Morris was transgender, but aside from one peculiar little chapter you'd hardly tell). It's really a book about the places.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic travel writing that really captures the essence of a place.

Moscow (1960s)
"A fusty crowd of passengers, muffled in wrappings, hangs about the customs desk: a fat, broad-faced woman in tears, her child tugging at the strap of her handbag; a sallow man in a velvet hat, arguing over a suitcase of brocades; a covey of Chinese, dignified and double-breasted; a welter of thick-set, sweaty, colorless men with badges in their lapels and elaborate medals dangling from their chests. Among them all the traveller warily passes, a shuffling, heavy-breathing porter carrying his bags behind, and into the car that waits outside; and so down the dank, snow-muffled road, through a landscape numb with cold, he is driven towards the city.

Thin flurries of snow are chased by the wind across the road..."

Kashmir
(1970s, on a poop boat)
"The lap of the water takes over, the quacking of the ducks in the dawn, the hazed blue smoke loitering from the cook-boat, the soft water-light, the glitter of the dewdrop in the water-lily leaf, the flick of the little fish in the clear blue water, the dim purplish presence of the mountain beyond the lake, fringed with a line of distant snow.

Time expands in such a setting... Scale, on the other hand, contracts. The focus narrows, within the frame of the Kashmir water-life. The picture gets clearer, more exact, and one finds oneself concentrating upon the minutiae, like the number of leaves upon the plucked waterweed, or the twitchy movements of the kingfishers..."

Darjeeling (1970s)
"Yet it is not the spectacle of the Himalayas that sets the style of Darjeeling. It is simply their presence. The town lives in the knowledge of them, and so acknowledges another scale of things. Its littleness is not inferiority complex, but self-awareness, and it gives the community a particular intensity and vivacity. Darjeeling is built in layers, neatly along its ridge like an exhibition town, from the posh hotels and villas at the top to the jumbled bazaar quarter at the bottom: and all the way down this dense tiered mass of buildings life incessantly buzzes, hums and fizzes. Darjeeling's energies seem to burn the brighter for their smallness, and not a corner of the town is still, or empty, or dull."

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jan Morris is an impressionistic travel writer. By that, I mean she likes to get the feel of a place by walking around, observing people, noting colors and activities. She engages with the locals constantly.

This makes her writings from 1950 to 2000 as much a time capsule as a travelogue. She writes about times and places that don't exist anymore. Well, the places exist, but not in the same way. Sometimes this is quite radical (the ex-Soviet Union) and sometimes more subtle (Manhattan then and now). At all times, it's diverting and informative.

My one caveat is that these short pieces were not written to be read together. Their rich imagery make them seem like confections, bon-bons that should be eaten sparingly rather than gorged upon. It's almost too much lush description to take in at one time, but it makes for great bathroom reading to read a few essays at a time.

Jan Morris died last November at the age of 94; she had quit her travel writing at 74, so her travels encapsulated the latter half of the 20th century. This book is an excellent summary of her life's work. I can't think of another writer who traveled more widely and wrote more engagingly about that time period.

[Paulo Santos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years ago, talking to a friend, I mentioned how I enjoyed reading travel books, and he asked me if I knew Jan Morris. I didn't, and he told me she was a great travel writer, the best, and strongly advised me to read her books. I forgot about it for a long time, until a couple of months ago, when I was browsing through Amazon, and I ordered this collection of essays to sample her writing. Well, I liked it, it's good and a very enjoyable reading, but it doesn't make me dream of travelling to the places she writes about, unlike Patrick Leigh Fermor or Bruce Chatwin, for instance. But I found it very interesting nevertheless, especially because, more than a travel book, it's a testimony of the world through the second half of the 20th century: in an impressionist way, Jan Morris shows us how the world was and changed. She's an intelligent and attentive observer, and knows how to vividly depict places and events. The writing is good, even if sometimes bothersome by the use of the same expressions in several of the texts, but then, they were written at different times. I don't think I'll be looking for more Morris books, but it was a nice read.

[Tony Lawrence]

Short Review
As this took me a long time to read I wrote a small summary of each decade-long section - see below. The whole collection has been curated by Morris as a personal travelogue (her ‘best bits’), a proxy history of the 2nd half of the C20th, and a unique perspective on an incredible period. Of course it is partial and selective, but who better than Morris to chronicle the geo-political and social history of the world, as he was there! (not forgetting gender and pronoun changes in the 1970s)

The journey starts with Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and the race to get the news of the scaling of Everest to London in time, and ends with the transfer of power of Hong Kong from Britain to China, by way of; the post-war rise and fall of the Soviet Union; the evolution of world cities like Manhattan, Sydney, Paris & London; the continued break-up of the British Empire; apartheid in South Africa; post-colonialism in Africa and Asia. There is also a coda about the 9/11 shock to the world order in the new century. I particularly liked some of the smaller personal trips and new places for my own bucket list!

One slightly jarring note for me was the privilege and environmental cost of her reportage, book-writing tours, and other pleasure trips … although I enjoy her writing vicariously, they are her experiences and air miles. Maybe this was the last 50 years where we needed a ‘roving reporter’, replaced with instant worldwide news and multiple feeds and channels, which in itself is 'blurring the edges’ of some of the unique people and places on earth.

Longer decade reviews
1950s review … this is a clever recycling of Morris’s travel writing and journalism, a unique perspective on the second half of the C20th. Morris has curated examples of her writing from each decade with some retrospective comments. It starts in John (then a reporter for the Times) being with the Everest party and getting the worldwide scoop in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Much of the 1950’s - in my mind at least - was a snapshot of the post-war world, including London, Paris, Berlin, Japan, and the USA. There is a wider social & political perspectives on the Middle East, apartheid South Africa, US race divides, Hong Kong countdown to restoration, the declining British Empire including the Suez crisis. Such a broad range of experiences and topics, for this and later decades, and different writing styles from Morris the author that go beyond simple ‘dispatches’ from our man in …

The 1960s starts with the Adolf Eichmann trial, or at least the beginning in 1961, as witnessed by Morris; in his words, ‘…. the last emblematical curtain call of the Second World War”. Coincidentally this pivotal features in another book I’m reading from the Muriel Spark back catalogue (The Mandelbaum Gate). More important to the new reality are visits behind the Iron Curtain and nearby destinations, from the US 6th Fleet prowling the mediterranean, to Trieste and Odessa, and up through Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Russia to Finland … again very hot topics 60 decades later. The other theme from the 1950’s is the end of Empire, a whistle-stop tour of post-colonial West Africa and Ethiopia, and then Australia waking up to its own unique culture and place in the world; murmurings of Republicanism reverberate into 2024. Morris finishes the decade with the iconic QE2 arriving in Manhattan, a place he claimed to have visiting every year since 1953.

1970s maintains Morris’s natural pull back to colonial times, maybe reflecting the opus that she is writing at the time ‘Pax Britannica’, including the anachronisms that are Darjeeling and Kashmir, but also the evolving post-Empire Singapore and Delhi. The decade pivots around her sex change in Casablanca (see ‘Conundrum’). There are essays to update us on her beloved Manhattan, an unexpected love letter from Los Angeles, and London, a city that she doesn’t really get. There is a nice mention of Proust in an essay about the nostalgic resort Trouville and its brasher modern neighbour Deauville. The decade ends in South Africa, in the last days of apartheid as a functioning racial segregation model, a last major part of the continent’s painful re-birth and self determination after the C19th ‘Scramble for Africa’. The comparison of between the 300 year-old White South Africans population - whether staunch Afrikaners or not - and [North] Americans as being ‘indigenous’ people is a fascinating insight. You could even compare the former’s Great Trek with American Westward expansion?!

The 1980s ends with the Berlin Wall coming down and the early days of (re)integration. There is also Morris’s first trip to China, an extended residency in Canada, and a ‘pilgrimage’ to the far-flung Welsh enclave in Patagonia, Argentina. Some of her most insightful writing has a wistful nostalgia for the past, trying to see a modern city through the lens of the past, in Shanghai/Beijing, Berlin, and Vienna … and even in her own lifetime looking back to changes over many decades. I have to admire the desire to keep travelling, exploring, and the inevitable frustrations and privations of travel. Maybe the privilege of travel has kept the weariness at bay, I don’t see any personal evidence of a wanderlust or psychological searching for something? I will take away one particular bucket list destination, the fascinating-sounding St.John’s in Newfoundland (as from previous decades, Trieste, Kashmir … )

The 1990s draws a close to the century, the British Empire (the handover of Hong Kong the Chinese) and Morris’s own professional travelling career … although not her writing, reflection, and engagement with the world from her small parochial and nationalist corner of North Wales. A lot of this decade involved catching up on the (re)absorption or East European post-soviet states into the wider world, and also final(?) visits to Manhattan and Sydney, cities that she loves.

[Schopflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morris can never write badly but this wasn't unmitigated joy. Her earlier articles often have the patronising, imperialist tone common to travel journalism of the era. It remains interesting in showing us a picture of a city in that time. The patronising Tome still crops up in later articles and I find it more grating there. By this time, as she says, she preferred writing books and articles were a way of ensuring a regular income and sometimes these articles seem slight and superficial. Some gems nonetheless.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is great travel writing. She is an astute observer wherever she goes. I thought she got a little testy in his later years. I guess one would be a little jaded and a bit too demanding after 50 years of travel, but this is just a little cavil. By and large, I loved going along with her wherever she went.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author has traveled just about everywhere over the past 50 years. She has a gift for figuring out a city's personality. Probably not something to read from cover to cover straight through, but definitely worth jumping around in over time. Especially the essays on NYC.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a fabulous book from one of the top travel writers of the last 50 years. Jan Morris starts off as a guy, then on page 209 has a sex change and carries on to the present day. It is fascinating how the writing changes!! Great read for avid travellers!!

[cwrigh13 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jan Morris stumbles from one cliche to another. Too many factual errors and misspellings.

[Jon]

Jan Morris was a reporter, working for the Times of London, who wrote a huge number of travel essays on assignment for that paper and other publications. He began his career as a man, but after a sex change operation in Casablanca (who goes to Casablanca for a sex change?), finished her career as a woman.

Morris had a couple of tendencies that show up in this book. First, she used a ton of obscure vocabulary. Quick! Define, without googling the terms, "gallimaufry", "prolixity", and "quiddity." This book will challenge you, certainly, even if you consider yourself well-versed in word lore. Second, she tended to long, flowery descriptions of the places she visited, with very little concrete information about realities "on the ground", and lots of talk about the atmosphere and attitude of those far-off lands.

A humorous aside:
"...long after Ernesto (Guevara) had matured into Che and had become a world-celebrated icon of the youth culture, I gave a lift in England to a hitch-hiker whose T-shirt bore a familiar picture of him - by then one of the best-known photographs on earth. 'I bet I'm the onlhy person you've ever got a lift from who actually met Che Guevara.' 'Oh yeah,' was the reply. 'Who was Che Guevara?'"

On the dreariness of the Soviet Union:

"Moscow in winter is hardly a dream, and not exactly a nightmare, but has more the quality of a hangover: blurred, dry-mouthed and baleful, but pierced by moments of almost painful clarity, in which words, ideas, or recollections roll about in the mind metallically, like balls on a pin-table."

On the job of travel writing/reporting:

"In Khartoum...I was interviewing the Minister of National Guidance (later executed for misguiding the nation) and he told me that my duties should be to report 'thrilling, attractive and good news, coinciding where possible with the truth.' I have followed his advice ever since."

Some things never change, and Morris remarks on Kashmir in the 70s:

"Kashmir is one of those places, deposited here and there in awkward corners of the earth, that never seem quite settled; a bazaar rumour kind of place, a UN resolution place, a plae that nags the lesser headlines down the years, like a family argument never finally resolved."

When I worked in the semiconductor industry a while back, Singapore was well on its way to world dominance in the field. Morris seems to anticipate this, also written in the 70s:

"Lee Kuan Yew (a Chinese politician) believes that the whole state must be resolutely directed towards a kind of communal expertise. There is no time for argument. There is no room for dilettantism, nostalgia or party politics. Prosperity is the single aim of the state, and it can be retained only by rigorous discipline and specialization, under the unchallenged authority of an intelligent despotism. Political stability, reasons Lee Kuan Yew, equals foreign confidence, equals investment, equals money for all, which is all the average citizen wants of life and statesmanship."

Might be some words for our own politicians to heed, there.

Morris seemed also to enjoy the big cities of the U.S.:

"New York..is a city of dedicated poets, earnest actors and endlessly rehearsing musicians. Draft after draft its writers are rejecting, and there are more good pianists playing in New York every evening than in the whole of Europe - smouldering jazz pianists in the downtown clubs, crazy punk pianists on Bleecker Street, stuff-shirt romantic pianists in the Midtown tourist spots, smashing student pianists practising for next year's Tchaikovsky competition, jolly young pianists accompnaying off Broadway musicals, drop-out pianists, drunk ruined pianists, mendicant pianists with instruments on trolley wheels, Steinway pianists flown by Concorde that afternoon for their concerti at Lincoln Center."

Armchair travelers should really have fun with Morris' book.

[Jeremy Walton · Rating 5 out of 5]

All around the world
I received this for my birthday last year (six months before, I now realise, the author's passing). I've enjoyed Morris's other travel books, appreciating her eye for detail and arresting turn of phrase, and thought it would be diverting to read about remote destinations at a time when travel to them (even those originally within my reach) has been restricted due to the pandemic.

This book fulfilled its promises in an exemplary fashion, opening with an account of the first successful ascent of Everest in 1953. Morris was the only reporter on the expedition, and her report - appearing in The Times on the morning of the Coronation - was her first great scoop (in a sign of the times, she notes that it didn't make the front page, as "it would be another thirteen years before news stories were printed on the front page of The Times" [p6]).

The pieces are all entertaining and engaging; the author uses the second person at least as much as the first, which draws the reader in and helps you visualize what's being portrayed. Thus:

"[E]ven as you watch, sipping your wine or toying with your fish, the lights go on like star clusters in the villages of the hills, higher and higher up the slopes, until at last the dark falls, the end of the sunset fades, and away above Beirut only the snow of the summits remains like a dim corona in the night" [p31].

This type of descriptive writing is a delight; elsewhere she exploits her gift of reaching for the exactly appropriate metaphor, as when she compares the "extraordinary people" of Hong Kong to the bundle of frogs seem in their markets, with "twelve legs apiece, [lunging] about with such comic and irresistible vigour" [p86].

Morris says in her introduction that she's edited the pieces in this collection here and there "when they get boring, or take up too much room" [pxiv], which has kept them them vigorous and heightened their impact (I noted her fondness for the words "astringent" and "gallimaufry" in a number of places, however).

Her eye for the apposite extends to what she's heard: on p165, she recalls being told by the Sudanese Minister of National Guidance (later executed for misguiding the nation) that she should report 'thrilling, attractive and good news, coinciding where possible with the truth'. She says: "I have followed his advice ever since". Indeed she has.

Originally reviewed 12 April 2021

[Patrick Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her introduction to these collected essays on travel and autobiography, Jan Morris dryly notes that after transitioning gender she felt "a sense of liberation which some critics have claimed to find apparent in my writing (if you would be amused to judge for yourselves, the final metamorphosis occurs on page 209)." It's a good line, and characteristic of the author's dry sense of humor.

I don't know if I sense the big change there, on page 209 (which describes what would now be called a gender-affirmatio surgery in Casablanca in 1972). But there are certainly changes in the books. Changes in the world, obviously, from the early Cold War to the first decade after it. But changes in the writer too. The early writings reflect some of the unthinking prejudices of an upper-middle-class Englishman (educated Lancing and Oxford, briefly a Lieutenant in the 9th Queens' Royal Lancers at the end of the Second World War) in the 1950s. Professing liberalism, Morris is horrified by racism in South Africa in the early days of Apartheid but hardly without racial prejudice herself, something that is also reflected in her writings on travels in the American south. A more genuine broadmindedness grows as Morris matures. And then there is the transition, unremarked on but very obvious, from someone who identifies regularly and apparently instinctively as British to a proudly self-identified Welsh nationalist.

I think it is to Morris' credit that she kept, and sometimes commented on, the earlier passages that don't necessarily reflect well her. She allowed her earlier pieces to be period pieces, captured in the moment. And what moments they were: rushing down Everest to telegraph London that Hilary and Norgay had safely descended from the summit, interviewing Che Guevara in Havana, attending the trials of Eichmann in Jerusalem and Gary Powers in Moscow....

There is no question that Morris lived one of the most remarkable lives of the later twentieth century. She also wrote about it constantly and rather well. Part of me wishes that, like her friend and contemporary Patrick Leigh Fermor, she had left a magnum opus that combined the reflections and knowledge of her older self with the experiences of her youth. But her scattered writings, some of which are collected here, are still wonderful.

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best way to appreciate a Jan Morris travel essay is to find a city that you think you know something about - for me it was Vienna, Austria - and then read her version of what makes that place distinct from everywhere else in the world.
What you quickly find is that Jan was better than anyone else at capturing the true essence of a place, the unspoken vibes and feel that cannot be described without deep levels of cultural and historical appreciation.
Unlike most travel writing, and certainly all modern travel writing, Jan gives her readers something they don't already know. Other people can tell you 5 restaurants to visit, when the galleries are open and when the best time is to photograph the local mosque or cathedral.
Jan couldn't care less about that.
She wrote in a way that helps you feel a kinship with the locals, with an eye towards understanding what makes each place unique.
We've lost that over the years, mostly because the Internet shrank the planet and because social media provided an endless new array of images that allow everyone, anywhere to see countless views of Earth.
That's mostly a bad thing, but that's not the point.
It's just not the way Jan wrote.
Two last points: the first essay in this collection captures her document of the ascent on Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary. It's remarkable. Also, Jan Morris was born James Morris and served in the military, before becoming a woman in the 1970's with a sex change operation. She includes that in one chapter of the book.
I have always admired Morris and now I have her best work in one book and I treasure it.

[Henry Jameson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first ran across Jan Morris some 45 years ago when she was James and when I read his Pax Britannica trilogy. It was a three volume history of the British Empire, and it was terrific.
I learned later that he had undergone a sex change and was now Jan rather than James, and from time to time I would come across travel articles she had written. I also read Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, her love letter to that city on the Adriatic. I found her to be a marvelous travel writer - observant, incisive and funny.
I came across this book in a used bookstore after her death at age 94 in 2020. It was first published in 2003. It is a compilation of her travel writing over five decades - '50's to '90's. That means it is a trip through time as well as as trip across continents. Most of the pieces in the book were originally published in magazines or newspapers.
It is best to read the book one piece or two at at time between other reading. Otherwise it will drag - like reading a few two many articles in a magazine or paper at one sitting. If you enjoy travel writing, try it. Jan Morris is a wonderful tour guide.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not relishing this book club selection as I often find travel narratives somewhat dull and filled with too many generalizations and while Jan Morris certainly does sometimes rely on broad strokes to describe the people and culture of a place, the shear breadth of her travels and the length of her career is amazing. And then you have the fact that she transitioned during the 1970s, which adds another interesting layer to her writing. She doesn’t dwell too much on the latter but it’s mentioned in some of the later essays in the book. Some of the the stories are a little dated but they were written in the 1950s, which I found to be a revealing window into perceptions of people and culture from 75 yrs ago but with some modern (early 2000s) commentary from the author. If you’re looking for a global travel narrative covering a 50 yr career, this book is for you.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jan Morris died last month. I had not heard of her before but was interested to hear that she was a Welsh journalist whose first news story was the successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953 and who traveled all over the world reporting for over fifty years. Included is an essay on Casablanca and the clinic where Jan had gender confirmation surgery in the 1970s. This 450-page volume sets her travel writing into a historical framework by decades and includes annotations on most of the stories. I confess to reading only about the places I was most interested in. The writing is intelligent, witty, and insightful.

[Jonas]

Great collection of travel writing. The pieces in this book are all interesting. Still, be aware that her writing is rather impressionistic as opposed to descriptive. Thus, you often won't get straightforward descriptions, say of Manhattan in the middle of the 20th-century, but more how the city felt like. Whilst I'm really fond of more descriptive accounts as well, I did enjoy these pieces nevertheless as Morris is a really good, engaging and smart writer. Small anecdotes, say of her taxi ride in Naples, stuck with me and were fun to read about. This is a recommend if you like travel writing.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never read Morris before and put her on my to-read this list after reading her obituary. This collects 50 years of travel writing. Morris was a witness to many fascinating moments in a fascinating half century. She also revisited places and had perspective on how things change. That said, I found this collection and her writing generally to be extraordinarily dense, to the point where it felt like work in stretches. The collection could have used an edit as the same words show up and that, too, made the reading a slog.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a real treat, spanning five decades and visiting every continent. With her eye for detail, her deadpan humour and her sometimes breakneck prose, Jan Morris is generous in letting us share her remarkable life.