Jan Morris: A Life

A spirited and truly compelling literary biography of the immortal travel writer, journalist and twentieth-century trans pioneer, Jan Morris.

When Jan Morris joined the 1953 Everest expedition and was first to get news of the ascent back to the young Queen Elizabeth in London, she became the most famous journalist in the world overnight. So began a glittering career that saw her cover the Eichmann trial, interview Che Guevara and scoop the story of Suez collusion.

Morris transitioned in the early seventies, and documented the experience in Conundrum, still considered a classic of trans literature today. She was a trailblazer adored around the globe and her books, including Venice and the Pax Britannica trilogy, have inspired hundreds of thousands of readers.

In these pages, celebrated travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon to reveal a mosaic of contradictions. Morris conjured the spirit of place in her work, yet her late masterpiece Trieste celebrates “the meaning of nowhere; she was a Welsh nationalist who wasn’t Welsh; and a preacher of kindness with a cruel side.

Drawing on unprecedented access to Morris’s papers as well as interviews with family, friends and colleagues, Wheeler assembles a captivating portrait of her astonishing life—a story of longing, traveling and never reaching home.