Jan Morris, CBE, FRSL (born 2 October 1926) is a Welsh historian, author and travel writer. She is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy (1968-1978), a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City. A trans woman, she was published under her birth name until 1972, when she had sex reassignment surgery after transitioning from living as male to living as female.
Video Jan Morris
Background
Born in England of an English mother and Welsh father, Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, and considers herself Welsh.
In the closing stages of the Second World War Morris served in the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, and in 1945 was posted to the Free Territory of Trieste, during the joint Anglo-American occupation.
Maps Jan Morris
Career
After the war Morris wrote for The Times, and in 1953 was its correspondent accompanying the British Mount Everest Expedition, which in the event was the first to scale Mount Everest. Morris reported the success of Hillary and Tenzing in a coded message to the newspaper, "Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement", and by happy coincidence the news was released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth's coronation.
Reporting from Cyprus on the Suez Crisis for The Manchester Guardian in 1956, Morris produced the first "irrefutable proof" of collusion between France and Israel in the invasion of Egyptian territory, interviewing French Air Force pilots who confirmed that they had been in action in support of Israeli forces.
Morris opposed the Falklands War.
Personal life
In 1949, Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter; they had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy.
Morris began medical transition in 1964. In 1972, Morris travelled to Morocco to undergo sex reassignment surgery, performed by surgeon Georges Burou, because 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 on 14 May 2008 were legally reunited when they formally entered into a civil partnership. Morris detailed her transition in Conundrum (1974), her first book under her new name, and one of the first autobiographies to discuss a personal gender reassignment. The opening lines of Conundrum have since become famous "I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I have been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life."
Morris lives mostly in North Wales, between the mountains and the sea.
Awards
Morris has received honorary doctorates from the University of Wales and the University of Glamorgan, is an honorary fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She received the Glynd?r Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales in 1996.
She accepted her CBE in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours "out of polite respect", but is a Welsh nationalist republican at heart. In 2005, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In January 2008, The Times named her the 15th greatest British writer since the War. She has featured in the Pinc List of leading Welsh LGBT figures.
In an BBC interview in 2016 she told Michael Palin that she does not like to be described as a travel writer, as her books are not about movement and journeys; they are about places and people.
Partial bibliography
Non-fiction
Travel
- Coast to Coast (published in the US as As I Saw the USA; 1956: winner of the 1957 Cafe Royal Prize)
- Sultan in Oman (1957; new edition by Eland in 2008)
- The Market in Seleukia (1957)
- South African Winter (1958)
- The Hashemite Kings (1959)
- Venice (1960: winner of the 1961 Heinemann Award)
- The Presence of Spain (1964)
- Spain (1964)
- Oxford (1965)
- The Great Port: A Passage through New York (1969)
- The Venetian Empire (1980)
- A Venetian Bestiary (1982)
- The Matter of Wales (1984)
- Spain (1988)
- Hong Kong (1988)
- Sydney (1992)
- Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
- The World: Life and Travel 1950-2000 (2003)
- Contact! A Book of Encounters (2010)
Essays
- The Road to Huddersfield: A Journey to Five Continents (1963)
- The Outriders: A Liberal View of Britain (1963)
- Cities (1963)
- Places (1972)
- Travels (1976)
- Destinations (1980)
- Wales; The First Place (1982, reprinted 1998)
- Journeys (1984)
- Among the Cities (1985)
- Locations (1992)
- O Canada! (1992)
- Contact! A Book of Glimpses (2009)
History
- The Pax Britannica Trilogy
- Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress (1973). Book 1. Covering the period 1837 to 1897
- Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire (1968). Book 2.
- Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978). Book 3. Covering the period 1897 to 1965
- The Spectacle of Empire: Style, Effect and the Pax Britannica (1982)
- Stones of Empire: Buildings of the Raj (1983) (by Jan Morris with photographs by Simon Winchester)
Biography
- Fisher's Face (1995)
Memoirs
- Conundrum, US: Harcourt Brace (1974) (personal narrative of transsexualism)
- Wales, The First Place (1982)
- Pleasures of a Tangled Life (1989)
- "Herstory" (1999)
- Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
- A Writer's House in Wales (2002)
Other
- Coronation Everest (1958)
Fiction
Novels
- Last Letters from Hav (1985: shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize for Fiction)
- Hav of the Myrmidons. Published together with 'Last Letters from Hav', as 'Hav (2006); shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C Clarke Award)
Short stories
- The Upstairs Donkey, and Other Stolen Stories (1961)
Miscellaneous
- Manhattan '45 (hardcover 1987, paperback 1998)
- Over Europe (Weldon Owen, 1991) - Jan Morris provided the text for this post-Cold War photographic project
- Fifty Years of Europe: An Album (1997) - published in 2006 as Europe - An Intimate Journey
- The Oxford Book of Oxford (editor)
- The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country
- Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest (2001)
- Our First Leader
- Thrilling Cities written by Ian Fleming. Jan Morris provided the introduction for the 2009 edition published by Ian Fleming Publications.
See also
- Sustrans
References
Further reading
- Derek Johns: Ariel: A Literary Life of Jan Morris, London: Faber & Faber, 2016, ISBN 978-0-571-33163-5
External links
- Leo Lerman (Summer 1997). "Jan Morris, The Art of the Essay No. 2". The Paris Review.
- Works by Morris at Open Library
- "Archival material relating to Jan Morris". UK National Archives.
- Portraits of Jan Morris at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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