Jan Morris

«Un cálido día del verano de 1946, cuando tenía veinte años, empecé a escribir un ensayo sobre la nostalgia sentada en un amarre junto al mar en el Molo Audace, en Trieste.» Tomando Trieste como pun

First published in 1964, this is a classic work of travel literature which brings Spain, its glory and its tragedy, vividly to life. Passionate, evocative and beautifully Notes.

In 1955 the winds of change were beginning to blow across the Sultanate of Oman, a hitherto truly medieval state. Rumours of subversion mingled with the unsettling smell of oil to propel the Sultan on a royal progress across the desert hinterland, from his southern capital of Salala to the northern capital of Muscat. It was an historic journey the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar. Jan Morris accompanied His Highness Sultan Said bin Taimur as a professional observer, and was inspired by the experience to write her major work of imperial history, the Pax Britannica trilogy.

The second instalment of the Pax Britannica Trilogy by Jan Morris, recreates the British Empire at its dazzling climax - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, celebrated as a festival of imperial strength, unity, and splendour. This classic work of history portrays a nation at the very height of its vigour and self-satisfaction, imposing on the rest of the world its traditions and tastes, its idealists and rascals. The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Heavens Command: An Imperial Progress and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain,A Writers World and most recently, Contact!In scholarship and humour this portrait of the British Empire before its decline and fall might, without undue optimism, be placed upon the same shelf as Edward Gibbons history. As a survey of its subject, I doubt that Pax Britannica can ever, in this generation be surpassed.Financial Times

Renowned and much-loved travel writer Jan Morris turns her eye to Sydney: not the best of the cities the British Empire created ... but the most hyperbolic, the youngest at heart, the shiniest.Sydney takes us on the citys journey from penal colony to world-class metropolis, as lively and charming as the city it describes. With characteristic exuberance and sparkling prose, Jan Morris guides us through the history, people and geography of a fascinating and colourful city. Jan Morriss collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Venice, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan 45,A Writers World and the Pax Britannica Trilogy. Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Sydney should be flattered. A great portrait painter has chosen it for her recent subject . . . Few writers - a handful of novelists apart - have got so far under the citys skin as Morris . . . Few Sydneysiders could match her knowledge of their citys history and its anecdotesThe TimesThe writing is, at times, like surfing: sentences rise like vast waves above which she rides, never overbalancing into gush . . . Jan Morris convincingly explains modern Sydney through its historyObserver

As one of Britains best and most loved travel writers, Jan Morris has led an extraordinary life. Perhaps her most remarkable work is this grippingly honest account of her ten-year transition from man to woman - its pains and joys, its frustrations and discoveries. On first publication in 1974, the book generated enormous interest and curiosity around the world, and was subsequently chosen by The Times as one of the 100 Key Books of Our Time. Including a new introduction, this re-issue marks a return to that particular journey.Certainly the best first-hand account ever written by a traveller across the boundaries of sex.Daily Mail

Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, The Cuban Revolution and so much more. Now, in Allegorizings, published posthumously as was her wish, Morris looks back over some of the key moments of her life, and sees a multitude of meanings.From her final travels to the USA and across Europe to late journeys on her beloved trains and ships, from the deaths of her old friends Hilary and Tenzig to the enduring relationships in her own life, from reflections on identity and nations to the importance of good marmalade, it bears testimony to her uniquely kind and inquisitive take on the world.

In Contact! Jan turns her brilliantly observant eye to the human contacts she made, across the globe and though the decades. As a series of vignettes, some only a few lines long, she records hundreds of brief glimpses and fleeting encounters, celebrating the people who helped spark her view of the world and mould her responses. A vast range of human experience is here: most are anonymous, everyday encounters - children playing, a homeless man in Manhattan, a lascivious taxi-driver - but she also remembers celebrated figures, from Yves San Laurent to King Hussein of Jordan, President Truman to Peter OToole. Contact! is a must for any fans of Jans writing. Her great sense of amusement, shrewd eye for detail and huge enthusiasm for her contacts makes these episodes incredibly enjoyable - and often profound.

I have never before in my life kept a diary of my thoughts, and here at the start of my ninth decade, having for the moment nothing much else to write, I am having a go at it. Good luck to me.So begins this extraordinary book, a collection of diary pieces that Jan Morris wrote for the Financial Times over the course of 2017.A former soldier and journalist, and one of the great chroniclers of the world for over half a century, she writes here in her characteristically intimate voice - funny, perceptive, wise, touching, wicked, scabrous, and above all, kind - about her thoughts on the world, and her own place in it as she turns ninety. From cats to cars, travel to home, music to writing, its a cornucopia of delights from a unique literary figure.

In a wonderfully evocative collection of her travel writing and reportage from over five decades, Jan Morris - a constant traveller - has produced a unique portrait of the twentieth century. Ranging from New York to Venice, Sydney to Berlin, and the Middle East to South Africa, Jan Morris was a witness to such seminal moments as the Eichmann trial, the first ascent of Everest, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the handover of Hong Kong.Offering a tremendously perceptive and highly personal view of the world, she is as much concerned with conveying the feel of these moments as the events themselves. And, as ever, she displays her unique and inimitable literary style, at once funny, wise and sad. Jan Morriss collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan 45, A Writers World and the Pax Britannica Trilogy.Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.A glorious compendium of adventure and wisdom Pico Iyer

Europe has been widely acclaimed as among the finest achievements of one of our greatest living writers (The Times). A personal appreciation, fuelled by five decades of journeying, this is Jan Morris at her best - at once magisterial and particular, whimsical and profound. It is a matchless portrait of a continent.

Necrophilia is not one of my failings, but I do like graveyards and memorial stones and such...Following the publication In My Minds Eye, her acclaimed first volume of diaries, a Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2018, Jan Morris continued to write her daily musings. From her home in the North West of Wales, the author of classics such as Venice and Trieste cast her eye over modern life in all its stupidity and glory. From her daily thousand paces to the ongoing troubles of Brexit, from her enduring love for America to the wonders of the natural world, and from the vagaries and ailments of old age to the beauty of youth, she once again displays her determined belief in embracing life and creativity - all kindness and marmalade.A book of great solace.Financial TimesMorris writing is just as elegant and erudite, and her mind just as supple, playful, curious, rigorous, humorous and surprising as ever.New York TimesAfter a lifetime of travelling the world, what a magnificent concluding sentiment.Daily Mail

Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat traces the momentous decline and fall of the greatest of empires - from Queen Victorias Diamond Jubilee to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. With characteristic balance, this masterpiece of narrative history describes the long retreat and final dissolution of the British Empire. The Pax Britannica Trilogy includes Heavens Command: An Imperial Progress and Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is also world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain,A Writers World and most recently, Contact!The British Empire is fortunate in having found in Morris a chronicler and memorialist who can do it justice. . . Morris writes with inspired gusto, firmly rooted in erudition, which carries the book into the realms of literature.Sunday TelegraphOne of our finest writers on Empire - alive to its glory, yet with a beady eye for the corruptions and failures which were at its heart, along with the dreams.Observer

The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man''s man. Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. Conundrum, one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris''s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

After a good dinner one evening with excellent company and a bottle of wine I settled by my fire with a volume of paintings by the 15th century Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio For much of my life I have been under the spell of this artist I am no connoisseur cultural scholar or art historian I know nothing about painterly techniques chromatic gradations or artistic affinities and my infatuation with him is largely affectionate fancy I feel I know him personally and I often sense that I am directly in touch with him across the centuries across the continents as one might be in touch with a living friend So starts Jan Morris s latest book which she has said will also be her last a genial witty and touching journey through the endlessly evocative art of Carpaccio Saluting the painter whose pictures remain some of the most enchanting ever made of Venice Jan Morris makes her own last journey to a city she has written about like no other Richly illustrated with complete paintings and eye catching details this book is a fitting swansong by a great writer to her favourite painter

A New York Review Books Original Hav is like no place on earth. Rumored to be the site of Troy, captured during the crusades and recaptured by Saladin, visited by Tolstoy, Hitler, Grace Kelly, and Princess Diana, this Mediterranean city-state is home to several architectural marvels and an annual rooftop race that is a feat of athleticism and insanity. As Jan Morris guides us through the corridors and quarters of Hav, we hear the mingling of Italian, Russian, and Arabic in its markets, delight in its famous snow raspberries, and meet the denizens of its casinos and cafes. When Morris published Last Letters from Hav in 1985, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Here it is joined by Hav of the Myrmidons, a sequel that brings the story up-to-date. Twenty-first-century Hav is nearly unrecognizable. Sanitized and monetized, it is ruled by a group of fanatics who have rewritten its history to reflect their own blinkered view of the past. Morriss only novel is dazzlingly sui-generis, part erudite travel memoir, part speculative fiction, part cautionary political tale. It transports the reader to an extraordinary place that never was, but could well be. Show more Show less

Edición en castellano.