Jan Morris: life from both sides

To present another author's literary output and make it a fascinating read is a mark of skill. Affection and warmth shine through, and it feels like a friend is describing a friend. Comprehensive and very readable.

This is a very good account indeed of the life of the writer Jan Morris, author of the Pax Britannica trilogy (one of about 60 publications), her history of the rise and fall of the British Empire. Morris, famously, was also a trans pioneer; she was born James Morris in 1926, undergoing what, in 1974, was termed a “change of sexual role”. She was a prolific and excellent impressionist historian and travel writer -- although she hated the “travel writer” tag, it nevertheless is a fair description of much of her literary output.As long ago as the 1980s, I read the Pax Britannica trio. It blew me away, to the extent that I have several times since re-read the trilogy’s 1,500 or so pages in their entirety. As history, it is impressionistic: not exhaustive or strictly chronological in presentation, rather almost a series of verbal paintings of rare vivacity and atmosphere. Morris places you *there*: at the 1897 Spithead naval review; in Ashantiland in the 1870s; approaching Lhasa, Tibet, in 1904 with Younghusband; on the doomed R100 airship in 1930; in the Pedestal convoy to Malta in 1942; at Churchill’s funeral in 1965 -- to give only a few examples. Pax Britannica is wonderful: in the same company, I categorise her works Venice, Oxford and Manhattan ’45 (the last also reviewed here).To label Morris simply as a historian or a “travel writer” is akin to calling the music of the Berlin Philharmonic ‘tuneful’.And yet, having read Paul Clements’ fine biography -- Life From Both Sides -- I can’t say that I ended up liking the character Jan Morris as much as I like her books. Clements clearly holds his subject in high esteem, and he seems to have read all her books. But he does not shy away from frank description of her character. Morris, in both her earlier James and later Jan personae, was enormously able and a stellar journalist, first for the London Times, then for the (Manchester) Guardian. She was also, by her own admission and to use her own words, a “flibbertigibbet”, “disgracefully self-centred”, and a compulsive globetrotter who lived her life as a series of repeated escapes. James Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss in 1949 and fathered five children by her. He (and later as Jan) then lived as if his family barely existed, travelling the world on journalistic and research missions, abdicating all domestic and family responsibility to Elizabeth, and not even seeming to feel any sense of regretful responsibility toward her. In 1972-1974, it seems without much reference to Elizabeth or their children, James transitioned to Jan. We don’t in this book learn much about Elizabeth, or about her reaction to her husband’s transition. We do come to know that Jan’s son Twm adjusted well; her other three surviving children less so. As Clements acknowledges, their marriage “managed to survive”.Morris’ first and greatest journalistic scoop, working for the Times, was to accompany the Everest expedition of Hillary and Tenzing in 1953, managing to be the first to transmit to London news of the successful ascent -- in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. It was a marvellous and ingenious achievement that is still admired. She also covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann (but was only there for the first nine days). She quit journalism at the early age of 37 to become a writer. As a writer, Jan Morris’ greatest achievements were probably the early ones: those named above, as well as Conundrum, her account of her sexual transition. Many of the books she wrote in later life were frankly so-so, it seems gaining (mostly) favourable reviews largely on the strength of her reputation and earlier works.All the while, Morris was an inveterate traveller. She was lucky to be able to do most of this travelling during what is sometimes called the Golden Age of air (early jet) travel -- between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s -- before the advent of mass tourism. Although herself a pioneering tourist par excellence, Jan Morris by her own admission “detested tourism”. Let me in…. then pull up the drawbridge. It’s hard not to see this as both hypocritical and snobbish.The other main theme of Morris’ life was as a Welsh nationalist. Jan Morris was born near Bristol in England, by an English mother and Welsh father. She spoke all her life with the cut-glass English accent of the pre-war English upper middle class. She only learned the Welsh language incompletely and with great difficulty. Yet she adopted a quite fanatical Welsh nationalism, pursuing complete independence from England and the UK and, as a republican, repudiating the monarchy (although she did accept the award of Commander of Order of the British Empire (CBE)). She lived all her later life (with Elizabeth, almost invisibly, there too) in Caernarvonshire in rural Wales at a place they called Trefan Morys (translates as Morris Town, perhaps at a stretch Morrisville). This Irish reader is used to seeing outsiders adopt Irish nationalism of a form more extreme than most of the indigenes; it has been called spray-on Irishness or ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. Maybe they have the same in Wales. On the account given in Mr Clements’ book, I am frankly unsure of the depth or genuineness of the Welsh nationalism of Jan Morris.With her greatest (in my opinion) books having been published by the mid-to-late 1980s, Jan Morris continued her peripatetic pattern of life, travelling all the time, mostly without Elizabeth. She wrote many more books (a very public early-2000s ‘retirement’ notwithstanding). Mr Clements is probably a bit exhaustive in enumerating these. In its coverage of the 1990s and 2000s, in my view, the book could be shortened a bit with little loss. Jan Morris also wrote a great many reviews of others’ books. As a reviewer, she could be harsh and snobbish, to an extent that she later often regretted and tried to ‘walk back’.Finally, in the 2010s, Jan Morris’ writerly spark was dimmed and then extinguished. She died in November 2020, survived by the stoical Elizabeth. Mr Clements’ account of her (and Elizabeth’s) decline is sensitive and gentle, and we are left mourning the passing of a great talent and of a sparkling human being – if one seemingly somewhat selfish and evasive of character.Recommended.

I found it turgid. I wanted to love it the way I loved her books, but I felt as though I was trudging through heavy mud. I’ll try again, perhaps it improves in the next 80%.

"Jan Morris - life from both sides" is a complete story of a remarkable author's life. A bit daunting in it's length and completeness, never the less it provides a wonderful chronicle of a remarkable author. I became acquainted with Jan Morris having had the pleasure of reading "The Matter of Wales." As an American, I have traveled extensively in Wales, having visited there over 15 times, marveling and hiking Snowdon and the Brecon Beacons many times, touring the incredible countryside, and visiting a myriad of castles. I truly appreciate Jan Morris' particular love of Wales and also commend Paul Clements for capturing the peculiar essence of Jan Morris' contribution to the literature. Thanks for the biography!

Be warned. This very expensive Kindle edition has none of the photographs in the print edition, and the end note numbers do not link to the end notes - you have to go there manually. Poor value.