A coming-of-age novel set in NORTHERN IRELAND
Authors on location – Jan Morris
13th February 2018
#AuthorsOnLocation – JAN MORRIS
For some writers location is as integral to their story-telling as plot or character. TripFiction takes a look at some of these authors, for whom a sense of place has helped to define their literary output. For the eighth in the series we have chosen Jan Morris.
Jan Morris has led a truly remarkable life. Born in 1926 as a man, she served in the closing stages of the Second World War before becoming a journalist with The Times. In 1953 she accompanied the first successful British ascent of Mount Everest, with Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss in 1949 and they had 5 children together, before Morris travelled to Morocco in 1972 to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
She is a historian, author and travel writer, although in a 2016 BBC interview with Michael Palin she said she doesn’t like being described as a travel writer: ‘my books are not about movement and journeys; they are about places and people.’
And just a couple of weeks ago, TripFiction were present at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for 2018, where Jan Morris won the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing, celebrating her significant contribution to this genre over many decades…even if she still prefers not to be called a travel writer!
For TripFiction readers, here are a few of Jan’s best known books about places and people:
Venice – ‘travelogue’ set in Venice
Often hailed as one of the best ‘travel books’ ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history book, but a beautifully written immersion in Venetian life and character, set against the background of the city’s past. Analysing the particular temperament of Venetians, as well as its waterways, its architecture, its bridges, its tourists, its curiosities, its smells, sounds, lights and colours, there is scarcely a corner of Venice that Jan Morris has not investigated and brought vividly to life.
Jan Morris first visited the city of Venice as young James Morris, during World War II. As she writes in the introduction, ‘it is Venice seen through a particular pair of eyes at a particular moment – young eyes at that, responsive above all to the stimuli of youth.’ Venice is an impassioned work on this magnificent but often maddening city.
Spain – ‘travelogue” set in Spain
Spain is one of the absolutes. Nothing is more compelling than the drama, at once dark and dazzling, of that theatre over the hills – the vast splendour of the Spanish landscape, the intensity of Spain’s pride and misery, the adventurous glory of a history that set its seal upon half the world . . .
Passionate, evocative and beautifully written, Spain is a companion to the country: its people, its history – and its character. First published in 1964 and no less compelling today, Jan Morris’s classic work is back in print, bringing Spain, its glory and its tragedy, vividly to life.
Hong Kong – ‘travelogue’ set in Hong Kong
First published in 1988, Hong Kong is a portrait of the British Empire’s last, most anachronistic outpost, as the countdown to the handover gathers momentum. Written with her trademark elegance and panache, Morris depicts a city tragically suspended between a colonial past and the uncertainties of China’s future.
Sydney – ‘travelogue’ set in Sydney, Australia
‘Not the best of the cities the British Empire created … but the most hyperbolic, the youngest at heart, the shiniest.’
Sydney takes us on the city’s journey from penal colony to world-class metropolis, as lively and charming as the city it describes. With characteristic exuberance and sparkling prose, Jan Morris guides us through the history, people and geography of a fascinating and colourful city.
Trieste and the meaning of Nowhere – ‘travelogue’ set in Trieste, Italy
Jan Morris (then James) first visited Trieste as a soldier at the end of the Second World War. Since then, the city has come to represent her own life, with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Here, her thoughts on a host of subjects – ships, cities, cats, sex, nationalism, Jewishness, civility and kindness – are inspired by the presence of Trieste, and recorded in or between the lines of this book.
Evoking the whole of its modern history, from its explosive growth to wealth and fame under the Habsburgs, through the years of Fascist rule to the miserable years of the Cold War, when rivalries among the great powers prevented its creation as a free city under United Nations auspices, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is neither a history nor a travel book; like the place, it is one of a kind.
Manhattan ’45 – ‘travelogue’ set in New York City, USA
In 1945, New York City stood at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power. Never again would the city possess the unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and confidence which characterized it in this moment of triumph.
In Manhattan ’45, Jan evokes the city in all its romantic grandeur. From its beguilingly idiosyncratic architectural style to its unmistakable slang, post-War New York springs to life through Morris’s brisk, affectionate prose. Morris visits Wall Street, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. She rides the trollies, the El, the Hudson River ferries, and the Twentieth Century Limited. She dines at Schrafft’s and Le Pavillon, drinks ale at McSorley’s Saloon, sips Manhattans at the Manhattan Club, and spots celebrities at El Morocco. She meets Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Moses, Leo Durocher, I. B. Singer, and Dizzy Gillespie. And she tours the tenements of Hell’s Kitchen and the Gashouse district, as well as the Foundling Hospital where the crushing realities of poverty belie the unchallenged exuberance of the age. Taking into account both Social Register and slum,
Manhattan ’45 celebrates New York’s Golden Age as a place where, for one unrepeatable moment in history, anything seemed possible.
Other authors on location:
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