Jan Morris

'I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to write, I am having a go at it. Good luck to me.'So begins this extraordinary book, a collection of diary pieces that Jan Morris wrote for the Financial Times over the course of 2017. A former soldier and journalist, and one of the great chroniclers of the world for over half a century, she writes here in her characteristically intimate voice - funny, perceptive, wise, touching, wicked, scabrous, and above all, kind - about her thoughts on the world, and her own place in it as she turns ninety. From cats to cars, travel to home, music to writing, it's a cornucopia of delights from a unique literary figure.

Celebrated as the "greatest descriptive writer of her time" (Rebecca West), Jan Morris has been dazzling readers since she burst on the scene with her on-the-spot reportage of the first ascent of Everest in 1953. Now, the beloved ninety-two-year-old, author of classics such as Venice and Trieste, embarks on an entirely new literary enterprise--a collection of daily diaries, penned over the course of a single year. Ranging widely from the idyllic confines of her North Wales home, Morris offers diverse sallies on her preferred form of exercises (walking briskly), her frustration at not recognizing a certain melody humming in her head (Beethoven's Path tique, incidentally), her nostalgia for small-town America, as well as intimate glimpses into her home life. With insightful quips on world issues, including Britain's "special relationship" with the United States and the #MeToo movement, In My Mind's Eye will charm old and new Jan Morris fans alike.

As one of Britain's best and most-loved travel writers, Jan Morris has led an extraordinary life. Perhaps her most remarkable work is this grippingly honest account of her ten-year transition from man to woman - its pains and joys, its frustrations and discoveries. On first publication in 1974, the book generated enormous interest around the world, and was chosen by The Times as one of the '100 Key Books of Our Time'.

"Khochesh mira, - glasit znamenitaja rimskaja poslovitsa, - gotovsja k vojne". Nesmotrja na to, chto so vremeni protivostojanija Kalgaka i Agrikoly u Grampianskikh gor proshlo uzhe 2000 let, eta poslovitsa, po mneniju avtora knigi ostaetsja spravedlivoj. Proanalizirovav istoriju chelovechestva za poslednie desjat tysjach let istorik Stenfordskogo universiteta Jan Morris prikhodit k vyvodu, chto "poleznye" vojny sdelali nash mir vo mnogikh smyslakh bezopasnee.

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisherHumorous tales of travel and misadventure. Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, they can give birth to our most found travel lessons, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories. These 31 globegirdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travellers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers. Includes stories by Wickam Boyle, Tim Cahill, Joshua Clark, Sean Condon, Chistopher R. Cox, David Downie, Holly Erikson, Bill Fink, Don George, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Jeff Grenwald, Pico Iyer, Amanda Jones, Kathie Kertesz, Doug Lansky, Alexander Ludwick, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jan Morris, Brooke Neill, Rolf Potts, Laura Resau, Michelle Richmond, Alana Semuels, Deborah Steg, Judy Tierney, Edwin Tucker, Jeff Vize, Danny Wallace, Kelly Watton, Simon Wichester, Michelle WittonAbout Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

WINNER OF THE GREATEST WELSH NOVELThis outstanding novel tells of one boy's journey into the grown-up world. By the light of a full moon our narrator and his friends Huw and Moi witness a side to their Welsh village life that they had no idea existed, and their innocence is exchanged for the shocking reality of the adult world. One Moonlit Night is one of Britain's most significant and brilliant pieces of fiction, a lost contemporary classic that deserves rediscovery.

Jan Morris tells the epic story of the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. In this celebrated masterwork she vividly evokes every aspect of the 'great adventure', ranging from ships and botanical gardens to hill stations and sugar plantations, as she traces the impact of empire on places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Fiji, Zululand and the Canadian prairies. The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together, these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is also world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'How many professional historians can write books that give so much pleasure? This is a book planned by an architect, fitted together by a craftsman, and polished by a cabinet-maker.' Sunday Times

The second instalment of the Pax Britannica Trilogy by Jan Morris, recreates the British Empire at its dazzling climax - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, celebrated as a festival of imperial strength, unity, and splendour. This classic work of history portrays a nation at the very height of its vigour and self-satisfaction, imposing on the rest of the world its traditions and tastes, its idealists and rascals. The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'In scholarship and humour this portrait of the British Empire before its decline and fall might, without undue optimism, be placed upon the same shelf as Edward Gibbon's history. As a survey of its subject, I doubt that Pax Britannica can ever, in this generation be surpassed.' Financial Times

Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat traces the momentous decline and fall of the greatest of empires - from Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. With characteristic balance, this masterpiece of narrative history describes the long retreat and final dissolution of the British Empire. The Pax Britannica Trilogy includes Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress and Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is also world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'The British Empire is fortunate in having found in Morris a chronicler and memorialist who can do it justice. . . Morris writes with inspired gusto, firmly rooted in erudition, which carries the book into the realms of literature.' Sunday Telegraph 'One of our finest writers on Empire - alive to its glory, yet with a beady eye for the corruptions and failures which were at its heart, along with the dreams.' Observer

"Journey through a mystical country where everything is possible and easily arranged" in this 2-part travelogue set in a fictional Mediterranean city of dreams (Los Angeles Times). "A touching lover letter . . . to life itself"--featuring Last Letters from Hav, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Independent) Hav is like no place on earth. Rumored to be the site of Troy, captured during the crusades and recaptured by Saladin, visited by Tolstoy, Hitler, Grace Kelly, and Princess Diana, this Mediterranean city-state is home to several architectural marvels and an annual rooftop race that is a feat of athleticism and insanity. As Jan Morris guides us through the corridors and quarters of Hav, we hear the mingling of Italian, Russian, and Arabic in its markets, delight in its famous snow raspberries, and meet the denizens of its casinos and caf s. When Morris published Last Letters from Hav in 1985, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Here it is joined by Hav of the Myrmidons, a sequel that brings the story up-to-date. Twenty-first-century Hav is nearly unrecognizable. Sanitized and monetized, it is ruled by a group of fanatics who have rewritten its history to reflect their own blinkered view of the past. Morris's only novel is dazzlingly sui-generis, part erudite travel memoir, part speculative fiction, part cautionary political tale. It transports the reader to an extraordinary place that never was, but could well be. "Jan Morris is to other travel writers what John le Carr is to other spy novelists." --New York Times

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, acclaimed travel writer and historian Jan Morris 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.

In Contact! Jan turns her brilliantly observant eye to the human contacts she made, across the globe and though the decades. As a series of vignettes, some only a few lines long, she records hundreds of brief glimpses and fleeting encounters, celebrating the people who helped spark her view of the world and mould her responses. A vast range of human experience is here: most are anonymous, everyday encounters - children playing, a homeless man in Manhattan, a lascivious taxi-driver - but she also remembers celebrated figures, from Yves San Laurent to King Hussein of Jordan, President Truman to Peter OToole. Contact! is a must for any fans of Jan's writing. Her great sense of amusement, shrewd eye for detail and huge enthusiasm for her contacts makes these episodes incredibly enjoyable - and often profound.

Fresh from her successful scoop reporting the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Jan Morris spent a year journeying across the United States, by car, train, ship and aeroplane. In herwords a "period piece", Coast to Coast describes an American identity markedly different from today. In her brilliant prose, Morris records with exuberence and curiosity a time of innocence in the US - when television was in its infancy, the Big Mac had not been invented and the popular song of the day was "Chattanooga Choo-Choo".

Jan Morris spent the South African winter of 1957 touring the country for the Guardian. This book, the product of her travels, was not a political treatise but an evocation of the atmosphere of apartheid, and an impression of life in South Africa at a time of great tension. There are glimpses of the Johannesburg treason trial and a one-day strike in the locations of the Reef; portraits of such diverse figures as Harry Oppenheimer, the magnate-politician, and Christopher Gell, the influential liberal who spent his days in an iron lung; impressions of the Parliament, of the Zululand reserve, of life in the mines and the open veldt. Jan Morris visited all four provinces and talked to an immense number of people of all persuasions and all walks of life, and she devotes a chapter to the individualities of the Afrikaner character, as it then struck an impartial and not unsympathetic observer. South African Winter (1958) - in the brilliance of its writing, the wit, intelligence and sharpness of its observation - is a work of enduring fascination.

'Years and years ago, observing that nobody in the history of man had ever seen and described the entire urban world, I resolved to do it myself ...'It was thirty years later, standing in the great square in Beijing, that Jan Morris realized that she had achieved her extraordinary ambition. Among the Cities (1985) is a magnificent collection which presents her personal selection of travel pieces, with definitive evocations of places as different as Alexandria and Bath, Warsaw and Wyoming. Whether she is describing Beirut before the lights went out, the cloying charms of Vienna ('no place for a Welsh republican'), the dream-world of Kashmir or the 'impending euphoria of Rio de Janeiro, Jan Morris never leaves us in doubt that she is one of the greatest travel writers - and one of the greatest prose writers - of our time.'I don't think there is a writer alive who has Jan Morris's serenity or strength.' Paul Theroux'She can even impart a place's smell.' Observer

Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire by Jan Morris - one of the world's pre-eminent travel writers - depicts the city of Hong Kong in 1988, tragically suspended between a colonial past and the uncertainties of China's future. 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.'It is difficult to think of anyone who could recount this tale with such authority, elegance and sensitivity as Jan Morris ... Here, she portrays what has always been Britain's most adjective-defying colony ... Morris so clearly likes the place, but she is not sentimental, nor is she blind to Hong Kong's flaws; she is aware of rootlessness in the teeming energy.' TLS'The book captures the contradictions and mad terror of Hong Kong better than could a novel - it's a dramatic documentary ... ' Evening Standard'The definitive study.' Washington Post

'We are lucky to have Jan Morris, and her gift of transporting us to other realms'. Salley VickersMovement is the raison d'etre of New York. In The Great Port, Jan Morris explores the waterfronts and thoroughfares of 1950's Manhattan just as she navigated the canals of Venice; she knows every bridge, every tunnel, every island of the whole archipelago. She depicts the city as a place of constant motion, which has been translated into a culture of inveterate restlessness. First published in 1957, The Great Port is a vivid and entertaining portrait of a splendid old seaport whose purposes have gone awry. When The Great Port appeared in New York, the Wall Street Journal called it 'unique', the New York Times said it discovered more than most New Yorkers had ever learnt, and the Publisher's Weekly thought it perhaps the best book on New York since the classic work of E. B. White.

'As a work of descripton and evocation [The Market of Seleukia] is wonderful ... showing us the enthralling interplay of politics, avarice, hate, national pride, and religious fanaticism in that part of the globe.' The New YorkerThe Market of Seleukia is a portrait of the Middle East at the catalytic moment of the Suez Crisis. Jan Morris covers the vast, colourful and dramatic ground of Egypt and Sudan; Lebanon, Syria, Jordan; the Arabian Peninsula; Iraq and Iran. With superb liveliness and lucidity, she traces the complicated and shifting patterns in this most tangled of webs: the Anglo-American oil war; the American Soviet struggle for dominance; the explosive impact of Nasser's nationalism; irrigation and reclamation; Islam; Israel. But Market of Seleukia is much more than political reporting: with wit, style and feeling, it captures the very texture of the Middle East. It is brilliantly observed and magnificently written, a book of major importance for today.