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Jan Morris is one of the great British writers of the post-war era. Soldier, journalist, writer about places (rather than 'travel writer'), elegist of the British Empire, novelist, she has fashioned a distinctive prose style that is elegant, fastidious, supple, and sometimes gloriously gaudy. For many readers she is best known for her candid memoir Conundrum, which described the gender reassignment operation she underwent in 1972. But as Ariel demonstrates, this is just one of the many remarkable facts about her life. As James Morris she was the journalist who brought back the story of the conquest of Everest in 1953 and who discovered incontrovertible evidence of British involvement in the Suez Crisis of 1956. She has been described by Rebecca West as the finest prose stylist of her time, and her essays span the entire urban world. Her many books include a classic on Venice, a 1,600 page history of the British Empire, and a homage to what is perhaps her favourite city, Trieste. Her writings on Wales represent the most thorough literary investigation of that mysterious land. Derek Johns was Jan Morris's literary agent for twenty years. Ariel is not a conventional biography, but rather an appreciation of the work and life of someone who besides being a delightful writer is known to many people as a generous, affectionate, witty and irreverent friend. It is published to coincide with her 90th birthday.… (more)
User reviews
She is generally described as a travel writer but that rather misses the point, too. She doesn’t write about travel, but about destinations. The only book of hers that I had read was her 1975 novel, Last letters from Hav, which made it onto that year’s Booker Prize shortlist. It is a marvellous description of a fictional city state situated somewhere on the Turkish peninsula. Nothing much happens in the novel, but it holds the reader’s attention through its marvellous depiction of city life, across all social strata.
Derek Johns is clearly a close friend of Morris, and an adherent of her writing. He does not, however, allow that to push him beyond biography into hagiography. He shows a cheerful frankness about some of her less morally unassailable deeds (nothing heinous, I hasten to add).
Morris’s writing bristles with its own enthusiasms. Perhaps one of the most widely travelled of journalists, she has probably written about more of the world’s significant cities than anyone else, and she has developed a delightful knack of capturing the salient atmosphere in a few simple sentences.
Johns himself is similarly adept, and writes informatively and engagingly. I picked this up in my local bookshop by chance, and it proved a serendipitous choice.
I have read some of Morris’ more than 50 books, and have significant further books by her on my pile of to be read, so I found this a very engaging book, with many well chosen quotes
The book tells us nothing that is not apparent from Morris’ books, but it is rather an indulgent treat to have it served up to the reader in such a lovely fashion, with a number of line drawings by Morris to accompany the text.