Jan Morris
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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.
She 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. She has also written about Spanish history and culture.
Born male, James Morris had sex reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972 and adopted the name Jan. She wrote of her quest for personal identity in her book Conundrum. She has maintained her marriage to Elizabeth Tuckniss since 1949. They had five children, including the poet and musician Twm Morys; one child has died. James Morris always felt himself to be a woman. In the sixties he started a medical regime of taking oestrogen injections. He planned to have his sex change surgery in Britain but the Charing Cross psychiatrists would not agree to the procedure unless he divorced his wife. He refused to do this and contacted the French surgeon Dr. Georges Burou. Dr. Burou was a world pioneer on sex change surgeries. Morris was castrated and his penis was removed. Dr. Burou created an artificial cavity that would do the duty as a vagina-like orifice. Labia were constructed from Morris's scrotal tissue. The cavity was lined with Morris's sensitive penile skin. Spongiform from Morris's urethra was fashioned in the area where a clitoris would be. Jan Morris has described the sex change surgery as 'a bloody violation'.
Morris served in World War II in British Intelligence and later wrote for The Times. Morris scored a notable scoop in 1953 by accompanying the British expedition which was first to scale Mount Everest.
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.[1]
Morris lives mostly in Wales, where her parents were from. 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.[citation needed]
[edit] Books
(Partial list)
Novels
Hav (2006);
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
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ "Courage Under Fire", The Guardian, 2006-07-10.
sv:Jan Morris
Categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since October 2007 | 1926 births | Living people | Transgender and transsexual writers | British travel writers | Welsh travel writers | Welsh historians | Commanders of the Order of the British Empire | Old Lancing | Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford | LGBT writers from the United Kingdom | LGBT people from Wales
