A Writer's World Travels 1950-2000 by Jan Morris

Published by Faber and Faber, pp448

By Kamin Mohammadi

this article appeared in WEXAS Traveller magazine, autumn 2004

Is Jan Morris our best travel writer? Personally, I think that a redundant question. Instead of jostling for place among so many splendid writers of the genre, Jan Morris has always stood apart. Though she writes about her travels, her writing seems to be about so much more than just the places she visits. She captures not just a sense of time and place, but a certain emotional truth and beyond that, some absolute truths about our times, the age we occupy, the world we inhabit.

So it is an undiluted treat to read a selection of her writing that spans the last half century, to see the world through the eyes of this remarkable writer. She admits in her introduction that this collection is as much about the writer as the world she is writing about and indicates that in no way should one expect objective realities, merely her own perceptions. In the passing of half a century, there is also the passage of Morris’ own life, the change from youthful journalist to mellow elderly writer, the change for Morris from being the man she was born to becoming the woman she was always convinced she was.

The pieces are varied and organised by decade. Through the 50 years, she covers every continent, starting with the account of the conquest of Everest in 1953 – a story with which she scooped the world for the Times – and moving through, among other countries, the United States of the 1950s, Eastern Europe of the 1960s, South Africa of the 1970s, China of the 1980s and the 'flux of Europe' in 1990s. She charts important moments in history: the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Berlin in 1989, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.

Morris rounds off with a powerful epilogue. Taking a meeting in Wales concerning the erosion of Welsh culture and language as her starting point, she embarks on one final journey around the world to discover if the hopeful zeitgeist of the last century had been replaced by any other. And so she sums up the Millenial concerns of the world: globalisation, the degradation of nature, the refugee crisis, blurring of gender roles, the rule of capitalism. As she recognises the confusion and chaos governing the world, Morris returns home on 10 September 2001. In the last sentence of the book, she foresees the current state of the world as succinctly as only she can

© Kamin Mohammadi