Jan Morris

Jan Morris CBE (born James Humphrey Morris on 2 October, 1926) is a British historian and travel writer. Morris was born in Clevedon, Somerset, England, and educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, but is Welsh by heritage and adoption.

Morris is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste and New York City, and has also written about Spanish history and culture.

Career

Morris served in World War II in British Intelligence and later wrote for The Times. As the Times correspondent 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 which, by happy coincidence (or media manipulation) 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.

Personal life

Born a male, in 1949 James Humphrey Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter, and he fathered five children, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy. In 1972, Morris had a sex-change operation (sex reassignment surgery) in Morocco, then adopting the name Jan, but still maintained the marriage. Morris wrote of her quest for personal identity in her book Conundrum. The sex change surgery was done by pioneer sex reassignment surgeon Georges Burou, since doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris first divorced his wife, Elizabeth, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time. They afterwards did divorce but remained together and have now had a civil union.

Morris lives mostly in Wales, where her parents were from.

Awards

She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Wales and the University of Glamorgan and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She received the Glyndŵr Award 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 January 2008 The Times named her the 15th greatest British writer since the War.

Books

(Partial list)

Novels
Hav (2006; shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C Clarke Award)
Last Letters from Hav (1985: shortlisted for the 1985 Booker Prize for Fiction)
Stories
The Upstairs Donkey, and Other Stolen Stories (1961)
Biography
Fisher’s Face: Or, Getting to Know the Admiral (1995)
History
The Pax Britannica Trilogy: Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978); Pax Britannica: The Climax of Empire (1968) Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (1973);
Coronation Everest (1958)
Memoir
A Writer's House in Wales (2002)
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001);
Pleasures of a Tangled Life (1989);
Conundrum (1974)
Travel
A Writer’s World: Travels 1950-2000 (2003);
Sydney (1992);
Hong Kong (1988);
The Matter of Wales (1984);
The Venetian Empire (1980);
Oxford (1965);
The Presence of Spain (1964);
Venice (1960: winner of the 1961 Heinemann Award);
The Hashemite Kings (1959);
South African Winter (1958);
The Market in Seleukia (1957);
Sultan in Oman (1957);
Coast to Coast (published in the U.S. as As I Saw the U.S.A) (1956: winner of the 1957 Cafe Royal Prize)
Essays
O Canada! (1992);
Locations (1992);
Among the Cities (1985);
Journeys (1984);
Destinations (1980);
Travels (1976);
Places (1972);
Cities (1963);
The Road to Huddersfield: A Journey to Five Continents (1963);
The Outriders: A Liberal View of Britain (1963)

Published Dates not checked:

• Manhattan '45
• In Search of England
• Fifty Years of Europe: An Album
• The Oxford Book of Oxford (editor)
• The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country
• Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest

External links

• BBC Profile
• Salon.com Profile