Andrew Lycett

Jan Morris’s ‘national treasure’ status is misleading

The author and journalist was an extremely private, complicated person, and the charming ‘aunty’ image she adopted was a clever disguise

Jan Morris. [Alamy]

Almost two years after the death of Jan Morris, the jaunty travel writer and pioneer of modern gender transition, her first post-humous biography has arrived. (I follow Paul Clements in using the feminine pronoun throughout.) It is lively and well written, but it’s not the finished product. It lacks access to the private papers of its subject and her wife Elizabeth.

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