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Journeys
More pieces about far-flung places by the writer described by Rebecca West as perhaps the best descriptive writer of our times.
173 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
5 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Jan Morris
166 books483 followersJan 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 11, 2022
Weird to read travel essays published in 1984. Some of it felt dated and boring, but it was interesting how insightful Jan was about places on the cusp of something - like Yugoslavia before the war (“with its lid tippling and clanking, like a kettle on the boil”), Tiananmen Square before the massacre (“the greatest square on earth, where an army could be massed”) or India before the assassination of Indira Gandhi (“a glimpse of chaos coming”). I enjoyed her attention to detail and her observation of individuals and scenes. She was also just a cool woman.
December 11, 2015
The famous story behind Jan Morris (once James Morris) allied with the often-breathtaking quality of her prose and the sharpness of her observations make for an always-attractive and rather heady brew. This collection of articles from the early 1980s (that is, pre-EU, pre-return of China, pre-computer ubiquity) brings together lengthy, always-sharp descriptions of Sydney, Stockholm, Santa Fe, Miami, China, a trip across Europe by car, India, Houston, Montenegro, Aberdeen, Las Vegas and a trip across Texas. Even at this distance (and I visited most of these place within a decade either side of these essays), the feeling is of a finger being placed fairly securely on the seam that runs from the innate personality of the place, which is pretty well what we ask of a travel writer.
However, there are a couple of things that struck me while reading the collection. One is that there is a sense of certainty in Morris that from here seems the product of a different age, when empires and their offshoots had created a temporary way of understanding the world that masqueraded as deep-rooted tradition. Not that she falls for overt imperialism, but simply that certain knee-jerk comments have that definite whiff about them: the supposed "foolishness" of Montenegro's pretensions to statehood, the rather snide broadsides aimed at the dull quasi-perfection of Sydney and Stockholm, the repeated paeans to manifestations of wealth-driven power (particularly in Texas) and the rush-to-judgment on Chinese subservience to centralised power that seems to circumvent a whole array of nuances…
The other thing is that until reading this book I had never considered the writer's gender as a thing apart. Some writers are clearly female, others are clearly male, and when you're in the middle of their works who gives a toss? But here I was forced to confront the issue, because I found that the female voice I was giving to Morris kept slipping into a male version that I had not placed there. That is, it was in the writing. Clearly gender in writing, like in hands and Adam's Apples, is something that cannot be redirected by hormones and surgery. It is most visible in the use of lists and in the sketching of the terrain and the available surfaces. A sobering thought, it constantly leads one to imagine the scene as Morris meets the people on the ground, because while there are brief moments of dialogue, these are pieces founded more on observation than on circumstance, more on texture than on human interaction. Which is no bad thing; the latter is usually the crutch of the ill-read and under-prepared travel writer. However it does suggest that we are missing the coalface of the transgender-inspired conversation in a way that we would not with a younger writer who had gone through the same thing. Is that a bad thing, then? I don't think so. In fact, I think this approach, fruit of an earlier time, allows to enjoy more of the impressive ability of Morris to capture these places than to sit there experiencing a non-stop polemic as we might have to do now. But the question is begged: what was really happening in these scenes? Did the people know who they were dealing with? Was Morris' transgender status out in the open, was it part of the discussion or was it hidden and undetected? I like the idea that it might not have been the driver of their conversations, but I find it hard to believe that it was wholly hidden. Certainly not in the early 1980s…
Among other things in this short book, Morris gives Sydney a sugarcoated serve for its homegrown brand of dishonest mateyness, lapses into a kind of humane post-imperialism in India, structures a visit to Wells as a visit to Barchester that only just gets away with it in the eyes of those who have not read Trollope, stretches to puff up Houston more or less to where Houston wants to be puffed up (but with obvious irony straining to seem to be past irony) and gives us a snapshot of Las Vegas just before the mega theme hotels took over. But all reservations aside, Jan Morris deserves to be read if only for her kinetic, impressionistic and utterly lucid prose and I for one intend to read more of her work.
However, there are a couple of things that struck me while reading the collection. One is that there is a sense of certainty in Morris that from here seems the product of a different age, when empires and their offshoots had created a temporary way of understanding the world that masqueraded as deep-rooted tradition. Not that she falls for overt imperialism, but simply that certain knee-jerk comments have that definite whiff about them: the supposed "foolishness" of Montenegro's pretensions to statehood, the rather snide broadsides aimed at the dull quasi-perfection of Sydney and Stockholm, the repeated paeans to manifestations of wealth-driven power (particularly in Texas) and the rush-to-judgment on Chinese subservience to centralised power that seems to circumvent a whole array of nuances…
The other thing is that until reading this book I had never considered the writer's gender as a thing apart. Some writers are clearly female, others are clearly male, and when you're in the middle of their works who gives a toss? But here I was forced to confront the issue, because I found that the female voice I was giving to Morris kept slipping into a male version that I had not placed there. That is, it was in the writing. Clearly gender in writing, like in hands and Adam's Apples, is something that cannot be redirected by hormones and surgery. It is most visible in the use of lists and in the sketching of the terrain and the available surfaces. A sobering thought, it constantly leads one to imagine the scene as Morris meets the people on the ground, because while there are brief moments of dialogue, these are pieces founded more on observation than on circumstance, more on texture than on human interaction. Which is no bad thing; the latter is usually the crutch of the ill-read and under-prepared travel writer. However it does suggest that we are missing the coalface of the transgender-inspired conversation in a way that we would not with a younger writer who had gone through the same thing. Is that a bad thing, then? I don't think so. In fact, I think this approach, fruit of an earlier time, allows to enjoy more of the impressive ability of Morris to capture these places than to sit there experiencing a non-stop polemic as we might have to do now. But the question is begged: what was really happening in these scenes? Did the people know who they were dealing with? Was Morris' transgender status out in the open, was it part of the discussion or was it hidden and undetected? I like the idea that it might not have been the driver of their conversations, but I find it hard to believe that it was wholly hidden. Certainly not in the early 1980s…
Among other things in this short book, Morris gives Sydney a sugarcoated serve for its homegrown brand of dishonest mateyness, lapses into a kind of humane post-imperialism in India, structures a visit to Wells as a visit to Barchester that only just gets away with it in the eyes of those who have not read Trollope, stretches to puff up Houston more or less to where Houston wants to be puffed up (but with obvious irony straining to seem to be past irony) and gives us a snapshot of Las Vegas just before the mega theme hotels took over. But all reservations aside, Jan Morris deserves to be read if only for her kinetic, impressionistic and utterly lucid prose and I for one intend to read more of her work.
November 8, 2014
Reading a collection of travel essays written in the early 1980s is a surreal experience. So I'll break this discussion into two parts: by golly I love Morris' writing, and the essays themselves.
By golly I love the way Jan Morris writes. She constructs beautiful, evocative sentences. Describing the approach to Wells: "As one descends from the spooky heights of Mendip, haunted by speleologists and Roman snails, it lies there in the lee of the hills infinitely snug and wholesome." On travelling to China for the first time: "Of course, wherever you are in the world, China stands figuratively there, a dim tremendous presence somewhere across the horizon, sending out its coded messages, exerting its ancient magnetism over the continents." I'm no writer; I don't have the ability to assess what makes great prose great. (There's a great piece of graffiti near my house that says "I know art, but I don't know what I like.") I do know that I enjoy Morris' writing, that I find her descriptions absorbing and sometimes moving, and that some of the books I read would be improved by their authors having read and considered Morris' style.
Separating the form from the content should not be read as a negative about the content, don't worry.
The first essay is about Sydney, and as an Australian this was really, really interesting. I felt there were parts that Morris exaggerated, and I was a bit uncomfortable with "Kev," the white-collar worker standing in for Everyday Aussie, and she pokes a bit of fun at Sydney attitudes and expectations. Now, all of these are standard in a travel essay, sure. But I've never read a travel essay by a professional like Morris about somewhere that I kind of know - I don't actually know Sydney very well, but Morris writes about Sydney as representative of the entire country (to which true Melbournians recoil in horror...). So I enjoyed the essay - she says some very true things, very appropriate things, and of course it's well written. But it also meant that when I read her other essays, of places I have never been (of every other place she mentions, I've only been to Wells), I was aware that a native of those places may well have the same reaction as I did to the Sydney essay. Which made for an intriguing experience: not completely immersed in the narrative or the description, but interrogating her assumptions and elisions and emphases. For this sort of writing, I think my experience was actually enhanced.
This is Morris' fourth book of essays. None of them have dates attached; the publication details simply explain that most appeared in Rolling Stone, a few in other publications. It came out in 1984 and there'a reference somewhere to 1977, so I presume they all date to that general time; the historian in me really wants dates on each one! There are several essays on parts of the US: my zero interest in Las Vegas succeeded in plummeting even lower, although Santa Fe intrigues; a few on Europe - she's not a huge fan of Stockholm yet somehow I am now more interested in going, and Cetinje in Yugoslavia (now Montenegro) absolutely fascinates. And the Indian and Chinese essays are probably the most intriguing, and most problematic, in terms of how people and places are viewed.
I love Morris' work and may well make it an ambition to collect most of what she has written.
By golly I love the way Jan Morris writes. She constructs beautiful, evocative sentences. Describing the approach to Wells: "As one descends from the spooky heights of Mendip, haunted by speleologists and Roman snails, it lies there in the lee of the hills infinitely snug and wholesome." On travelling to China for the first time: "Of course, wherever you are in the world, China stands figuratively there, a dim tremendous presence somewhere across the horizon, sending out its coded messages, exerting its ancient magnetism over the continents." I'm no writer; I don't have the ability to assess what makes great prose great. (There's a great piece of graffiti near my house that says "I know art, but I don't know what I like.") I do know that I enjoy Morris' writing, that I find her descriptions absorbing and sometimes moving, and that some of the books I read would be improved by their authors having read and considered Morris' style.
Separating the form from the content should not be read as a negative about the content, don't worry.
The first essay is about Sydney, and as an Australian this was really, really interesting. I felt there were parts that Morris exaggerated, and I was a bit uncomfortable with "Kev," the white-collar worker standing in for Everyday Aussie, and she pokes a bit of fun at Sydney attitudes and expectations. Now, all of these are standard in a travel essay, sure. But I've never read a travel essay by a professional like Morris about somewhere that I kind of know - I don't actually know Sydney very well, but Morris writes about Sydney as representative of the entire country (to which true Melbournians recoil in horror...). So I enjoyed the essay - she says some very true things, very appropriate things, and of course it's well written. But it also meant that when I read her other essays, of places I have never been (of every other place she mentions, I've only been to Wells), I was aware that a native of those places may well have the same reaction as I did to the Sydney essay. Which made for an intriguing experience: not completely immersed in the narrative or the description, but interrogating her assumptions and elisions and emphases. For this sort of writing, I think my experience was actually enhanced.
This is Morris' fourth book of essays. None of them have dates attached; the publication details simply explain that most appeared in Rolling Stone, a few in other publications. It came out in 1984 and there'a reference somewhere to 1977, so I presume they all date to that general time; the historian in me really wants dates on each one! There are several essays on parts of the US: my zero interest in Las Vegas succeeded in plummeting even lower, although Santa Fe intrigues; a few on Europe - she's not a huge fan of Stockholm yet somehow I am now more interested in going, and Cetinje in Yugoslavia (now Montenegro) absolutely fascinates. And the Indian and Chinese essays are probably the most intriguing, and most problematic, in terms of how people and places are viewed.
I love Morris' work and may well make it an ambition to collect most of what she has written.
July 26, 2019
Remarkable piece of history here. Other popular travel writers often put too much of themselves in or too much of the ephemeral or trivial. Morris gets to the heart and says in a few clear sentences what others fail to say in thousands of words. To compare Santa Fe with, say Bryson's account of his visit to the city is comparing rocks and diamonds. She knows her stuff, knows how to express it. Placing her essays in the context of the subsequent histories of the places visited has historic relevance. The economic miracles of China and India are the more miraculous for that. The tragic events in the Balkans in the 90s are obliquely foreshadowed. I'm glad I turned down the opportunity to relocate to Sydney in the 80s and have never understood why anyone with a brain would go anywhere near Las Vegas. The places I have travelled to ring with fresh recollection from these pages. Other places I am happy to let the likes of Ms Morris do the travelling so I don't have to.
A brilliant writer, an immensely wise woman and a sparkling wit.
A brilliant writer, an immensely wise woman and a sparkling wit.
February 4, 2021
The writing was uneven. Some places-India and Texas- were lively and descriptive. Others, were dull and unmemorable. Ironically, her own backyard of Europe was patchy. In one essay, "European Journey," she barely gives 3 pages to London, 3 pages to France, then the same for Italy and Switzerland. Her travel writing is sparse on dialogue.
Finally, Morris's books are hard to find. They are often out of circulation at libraries or obscenely expensive online.
Finally, Morris's books are hard to find. They are often out of circulation at libraries or obscenely expensive online.
September 7, 2012
Excellent essays about Australia, Miami, Las Vegas, and (especially) Texas for you Texans who might be reading this.
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September 12, 2022Acute, beautifully written.
September 19, 2022
I love the writing & these essays, though old, take me back to the places she visited. She is a writer of long, perfect, sometimes meandering sentences
May 27, 2023
Unexpectedly beautiful. I am not one for travelogues, but this really blew me away and I soaked in every word. Jan Morris is gifted at understanding the spirit of cities, and describing them in such ways that they become demigods in your mind. Houston, Stockholm, Sydney, and Beijing were my favorites.
My only complaint was a few very blatant and irresponsible spelling errors that could have easily been fixed by a seasoned editor. Other than that, this was a beautiful work of art that I highly recommend to anyone that loves urban studies or travel.
My only complaint was a few very blatant and irresponsible spelling errors that could have easily been fixed by a seasoned editor. Other than that, this was a beautiful work of art that I highly recommend to anyone that loves urban studies or travel.
May 10, 2025
This is a series of short chapters by the incomparable Jan Morris covering her musings on, contrary to the title of this book,in the main cities across the world. While this book describes journeys undertaken in the 1980s her books are in a sense timeless and whimsical covering cities as disparate as Santa Fe, Wells, Miami and Centinje. While the chapters are little more than snapshots they are well observed and infused with her sense of history, people and the random observation of a passing person. Recommended.
October 13, 2025
I don't remember Jan Morris as being so critical and cynical as she was in this book. She seemed to find the worst in every place she visited and wrote about here. The writing is excellent but the observations and opinions were terrible off-putting. Part of it is probably that she was writing about travels in the 1970s, and she would have been around 50 at the time so she was looking at things and expressing her opinions with language that we might frown on now. So, the book has not held up.
February 8, 2019
In college I took a Travel Writing course, and for it, this was required reading. I loved it and plan to re-read it 2019, as I still have my copy. So glad a different Jan Morris book popped up on my feed and reminded me of “Journeys”!
October 31, 2023
3.5 stars
overall entertaining - i enjoyed reading about these cities from 50 years in the future lol
Morris was a little too capitalistic for my liking though - i didn’t notice this much in Hav! the Chinese essay really hammered this home for me
overall entertaining - i enjoyed reading about these cities from 50 years in the future lol
Morris was a little too capitalistic for my liking though - i didn’t notice this much in Hav! the Chinese essay really hammered this home for me
November 20, 2024
Very dates (early 80’s) but very good travel writing.
May 30, 2011
This collection of magazine articles, the majority from Rolling Stone, show off Jan Morris' ability to encapsulate an entire city in the span of a few pages. Of the places I've been -- Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Houston and rural Texas are all featured in their own story -- her analysis is enlightening and, from my perspective, accurate, allowing for the change that may or may not have occurred in the 30 years since these stories were written. Jan Morris is exceptional at finding the pulse of a place and connecting its origins to its present.
But there felt something lacking, something that kept me disengaged, and after a while I decided it was the lack of characters in her story. Rather than being transported to and immersed in these locales, I felt like I was looking at paintings -- exceptional paintings, but art that nonetheless had me feeling separated from experience by a pane of thick glass. It isn't my cup of tea, but it is still interesting, albeit sometimes feeling more like a classroom lecture. Morris spent large chunks of time writing entire books about individual cities -- the bulk of her life's work has centered around the world's great cities -- and I would be interested to read those and see how they differ, not just in detail and discovery but also in the characters featured.
But there felt something lacking, something that kept me disengaged, and after a while I decided it was the lack of characters in her story. Rather than being transported to and immersed in these locales, I felt like I was looking at paintings -- exceptional paintings, but art that nonetheless had me feeling separated from experience by a pane of thick glass. It isn't my cup of tea, but it is still interesting, albeit sometimes feeling more like a classroom lecture. Morris spent large chunks of time writing entire books about individual cities -- the bulk of her life's work has centered around the world's great cities -- and I would be interested to read those and see how they differ, not just in detail and discovery but also in the characters featured.
July 19, 2007
as james, he wrote brilliant 3 volume history of br empire. these are travel writings from a variety of places, interesting but melancholic
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews