Jan Morris

A fascinating exploration of the history, sights, seasons, arts, food, and people of an incomparable city. "A highly intelligent portrait of an eccentric city, written in powerful prose and enlivened by many curious mosaics of information...a beautiful book to read and to possess" (The Observer). New Foreword by the Author. Index.

For six centuries the Republic of Venice was a maritime empire, its sovereign power extending throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean – an empire of coasts, islands and isolated fortresses by which, as Wordsworth wrote, the mercantile Venetians 'held the gorgeous east in fee'. Jan Morris reconstructs the whole of this glittering dominion in the form of a sea-voyage, travelling along the historic Venetian trade routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. It is a traveller's book, geographically arranged but wandering at will from the past to the present, evoking not only contemporary landscapes and sensations but also the characters, the emotions and the tumultuous events of the past. The first such work ever written about the Venetian ‘Stato da Mar’, it is an invaluable historical companion for visitors to Venice itself and for travellers through the lands the Doges once ruled.

No one, since the days of the great Arab travelers, has described so much of the known world as Jan Morris. Considered by many the preeminent travel writer of our age, she now offers this retrospective selection of her best writings. Including 37 pieces, several of which have never appeared in book form before, these essays cover Morris' entire career from the 1950s to the present, spanning the globe from China to Peru, from Beirut to Houston, and from Leningrad to Manhattan. Writing with elegance, passion, and wit, she captures the complex personality of each city, whether familiar or exotic. In the Preface, she clarifies her purpose: "First to last, the world never ceased to astonish me, and I hope at least a little of that power to amaze, if nothing more profound, may be found between the covers of this book."

Hailed by Alistair Cooke as the 'Flaubert of the jet age', Jan Morris's ability to capture the surface and essence of a place has secured her reputation as a leading contemporary travel writer. In this collection of pieces on places as different as Las Vegas and Bombay, Athens and Shanghai, and Sydney and Aberdeen, she combines observation, history, and politics to produce the passionate and witty essays that prompted Rebecca West to call her 'the best descriptive writer of our times'.

A fascinating exploration of the history, sights, seasons, arts, food, and people of an incomparable city. "A highly intelligent portrait of an eccentric city, written in powerful prose and enlivened by many curious mosaics of information...a beautiful book to read and to possess" (The Observer). New Foreword by the Author. Index.

This concluding volume brings readers up to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. "Morris has written an unorthodox masterpiece... a] book filled with superb studies of battles, ceremonies, landscapes, confrontations and, above all, characters" (New York Times Book Review). Index. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book