oh to travel, isn't that just the thing, everyone's favorite hobby, to get away and have adventures, see life from different angles, take in history and view the panorama of the world all at the same time, you go some wheres and see some things, but unless you are traveling for pure thrill-seekin...
Jan Morris called Britain's handling of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong "sufficiently stylish". I think that's meant to be faint praise.Funnily enough, that's the exact phrase I'd use to describe her book. But my praise isn't faint.Morris has a lot of love for word-play and a lot of love for Hong...
Magic. This is what all travel books ought to be like: insightful, witty, informative. Again and again, Jan Morris manages to spot the tiny detail – the one that you or I probably wouldn’t have noticed - that somehow draws out the essence of a place and that makes you think “ah yes, that’s wha...
This is essential history.Amazon review:I'm in the midst of reading the trilogy, and I must say that, as a history major and history buff, I've never come across a history so well-told and of such consistent quality. And by "quality" I mean not only the quality of the prose itself but the editing...
I didn't like this so much when I read it about 7 or 8 years ago, but my friend Robin Hemley, whose opinions I value, thinks it's really good, so I'm going to have to go back now. I've been to Trieste many times, so maybe I'm comparing her discussions with my own memories and impressions. Maybe I...
”At first sight, I’m sure you will agree, it is nothing much to look at. There are lots of such buildings in our part of Wales--solid old stone-built farm buildings, apparently timeless, built of big rough boulders and roofed with slate from the mountain quarries. Many of them are crumbled now, b...
I love Jan Morris, having been blown away by two quite different projects of hers: the first, her epic 3-volume evocation of the British Empire which summons up the complexity and hugeness of the thing in a series of detailed vignettes; the second, her single-volume meditations on individual citi...
In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - no...
Whether you are a connoisseur of high ice and windy ridges or a sedate epicure of modern English prose, Morris's Coronation Everest will send a chill down your spine. As much a story of mid-century journalism and the rush for the scoop as a record of the first successful conquest of Everest, the ...
If you've made it through the first two books of this series, you already know exactly what to expect. If you choose to start here because you're more interested in the post-Victorian reversal of fortune, then it's safe to say you could jump in and not really be lost. You'd miss out, but you woul...
Near the end of Conundrum, Jan Morris writes about walking through Casablanca on the eve of her sex change operation as feeling like she was about to pay “a visit to a wizard,” like she was “a figure of fairy tale, about to be transformed” (119). And, as in some fairy tales, what she is to be tra...
We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do,We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too! INNOCENTS ABROAD!This is history told through a patchwork of breezy anecdotes — that might not even fit together well enough, but still achieves the objective remarkably well. The narra...
A brilliant and touching piece of imagination, conjuring a city of impossible possibilities, much like the writings of Calvino and Borges, where pleasures and life are truly possible.
Patrick Leigh Fermor relied on a Rhine barge, the odd lorry lift and his own two legs to carry him through Holland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Northern Hungary. Now, he’s crossing the Great Hungarian Plain on horseback: Whenever he got the chance, Malek broke into a canter, and one of ...
The classic evocation of Venice, acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written about the city. 'Entertaining, ironical, witty, high spirited and appreciative . . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a...
The best way to sample this extraordinary region of marsh and sand dune—short of taking a string of mules and making for the middle of it—is to visit a fascinating village called El Rocío, twenty-odd miles off the road from Seville to Huelva. It is chiefly a place of pilgr...
Indians of, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 irrigation in, 1 mail service to, 1 maps of, 1 migration to, 1, 2 racial attitudes in, 1, 2, 3 railways of, 1, 2 Scots in, 1 self-governing colony, 1, 2, 3 settlers of, 1, 2 shipping lines to, 1, 2, 3 sports in, 1 telegraph to, 1 trade of, 1, 2, 3 United States and, 1...
Manhattan dialogue I chanced one day, off the joggers’ circuit in Central Park, to come across a young black man fast asleep upon a bench below the lake. His overcoat was thrown over him, his books were placed neatly side by side upon the ground. His head upon his clasped hands, as in kindergar...
: The Sierra Club 26. The Sierra Club The geographical position of the city is delectable. On one side is the Pacific, with a gentle range of hills running along its shore; on the other a lush and friendly plain leads away to the Sierra Nevada, one of the noblest mountain ...
Many people I met remembered the last piece I had written about the city, a quarter of a century before. ‘Kev. Kev! Time you got going.’ ‘Jeez, Sandra, it’s raining out there.’ ‘TV says it’s fining up. You’re not crook are you, Kev? It’s all that booze you know, Kev, you k...
When I came to this apartment they looked brown and melancholy, like so much else in Hav. Then, almost as I watched, they became perceptibly greener and happier. And yesterday, when I went out on to my balcony with my morning coffee, lo! they were a magical blush of pinks, blues and yellows. &nbs...