Jan Morris

Jan Morris
Born	October 2, 1926 (1926-22-02) (age 84) Clevedon, Somerset, England
Occupation	Travel Writer
Nationality	Welsh
Genres	non-fiction, travel writing
janmorris.tumblr.com

Jan Morris CBE (b. 2 October 1926, Clevedon, Somerset, England) is a Welsh nationalist, historian, author and travel writer. She 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.

With an English mother and Welsh father, Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but now considers herself Welsh. A gender re-assigned woman, she was published under her former name, James Morris, until the 1970s.

Career

Morris served in World War II in the 9th Queen's Royal Lancers, and later wrote for The Times. As a correspondent for The Times, Morris scored a notable scoop in 1953 when accompanying the British expedition which was 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.^[1]

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.^[2]

As a soldier, Morris was posted in Trieste in 1945 during the joint Anglo-American occupation.

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.

Male at birth, Morris began medical transition in 1964.^[3] In 1972, Morris traveled 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.^[4] They divorced later, but remained together and on 14 May 2008 were legally reunited when they formally entered into a Civil Partnership.^[5] Morris lives mostly in Wales, the land of her father.

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 Glyndŵr Award in 1996.^{[citation needed]}

She accepted her CBE in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours "out of polite respect", but is a Welsh nationalist republican at heart.^[6] In January 2008 The Times named her the 15th greatest British writer since the War.^[5]

Partial bibliography

Non-fiction

Travel

• Coast to Coast (published in the U.S. as As I Saw the U.S.A) (1956: winner of the 1957 Cafe Royal Prize)
• Sultan in Oman (1957)
• 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)
• 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)
  • Excerpts from Contact! are frequently featured on a Jan Morris blog.

Spain (1964)

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)

Other

• Coronation Everest (1958)

History

The Pax Britannica Trilogy:

• Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (1973)
• Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire (1968)
• Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978)

• Stones of Empire: Buildings of the Raj (1983) (by Jan Morris with photographs by Simon Winchester)

Biography

• Fisher's Face (1995)

Memoir

• Conundrum (1974)
• Wales, The First Place (1982)
• Pleasures of a Tangled Life (1989)
• Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
• A Writer's House in Wales (2002)
• "Herstory" (1999)

Fiction

Novels

• Last Letters from Hav (1985: shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize for Fiction)
• Hav (2006; shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C Clarke Award)

Short stories

• The Upstairs Donkey, and Other Stolen Stories (1961)

Miscellaneous (publisher's dates not checked)

• Manhattan '45 (hardcover 1987, paperback 1998)
• 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

See also

• Sustrans

References

1. ^ Venables, Stephen (2003). To the top: the story of Everest. London: Walker Books. pp. 63. ISBN 0-7445-8662-3. 
2. ^ Rusbridger, Alan (10 July 2006). "Courage Under Fire". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jul/10/pressandpublishing.egypt. Retrieved 12 March 2010. 
3. ^ Morris, Jan (2006). Conundrum. New York Review of Books. ISBN 9781590171899. 
4. ^ Morris, Jan (2006). Conundrum. New York Review of Books. p. 174. ISBN 9781590171899. 
5. ^ ^{a b} McSmith, Andy (4 June 2008). "Love story: Jan Morris - Divorce, the death of a child and a sex change... but still together". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/love-story-divorce-the-death-of-a-child-and-a-sex-change-but-still-together-839602.html. Retrieved 12 March 2010. 
6. ^ Frost, Caroline. "Jan Morris:A Profile". BBC Four website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/profile_jan_morris.shtml. 

External links

• BBC Profile
• Salon.com Profile
• Leo Lerman (Summer 1997). "Jan Morris, The Art of the Essay No. 2". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1251/the-art-of-the-essay-no-2-jan-morris. 
• Contact! Blog
• Open Library. Works by Morris

Persondata
Name	Morris, Jan
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	2 October 1926
Place of birth	Clevedon, Somerset, England
Date of death
Place of death