Sara Wheeler for Jan Morris: A Life

'Superb.' - Colin Thubron

'Breathtakingly good.' - Michael Palin

There are few literary figures more significant in the last seventy-years than Jan Morris. From her magnum-opus, Trieste, to her outspoken support of transgender people, and her gender reassignment surgery, Morris is a figure whose life demands documentation. Sara Wheeler's authorised biography, Jan Morris: a Life, is deeply readable, unflinchingly honest, and remarkably timely.

We are delighted to be hosting Sara, and we hope to see you there!

She was the twentieth century. Who wouldn't want to write her biography?

When Jan Morris joined the 1953 Everest expedition and was first to get news of the ascent back to London, she became the most famous journalist in the world. So began a glittering career covering the Eichmann trial, interviewing Che Guevara and scooping the story of Suez collusion. Morris transitioned in the early seventies and documented the experience in Conundrum. She was a pioneer and her books, including Venice and the Pax Britannica trilogy, have inspired readers across the globe.

Here, renowned travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon to reveal a mosaic of contradictions. Morris's work conjured the spirit of place, yet her late masterpiece Trieste celebrates 'the meaning of nowhere'; she was a Welsh nationalist who wasn't Welsh; a preacher of kindness with a cruel side. This is a portrait of an astonishing life, and a scintillating story of longing, travel and never reaching home.

Sara Wheeler is an award-winning and internationally bestselling travel writer and biographer, and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio; like Jan Morris, she has spent half her working life on the road. Her eleven books include Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica and Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a contributing editor of the Literary Review.

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