‘I felt a yearning for I knew not what, as though there were a piece missing from my pattern, or some element in me that should be hard and permanent, but was instead soluble and diffuse . . . Perhaps one day, when I grew up, I would be as solid as other people appeared to be: but perhaps I was meant always to be a creature of wisp or spindrift, loitering in this inconsequential way almost as though I were intangible.’
– Jan Morris, Conundrum
Last week marked the release of The Slightly Foxed Podcast Episode 57 in which we discussed travel writer Norman Lewis. Since then, we have all been struck with travel fever, returning to our favourite books about far-flung places.
Jan Morris, one of our favourite travel writers, has been especially on our minds with the recent publication of Jan Morris: A Life. Written by renowned author and biographer Sara Wheeler and described by the Guardian as ‘a sensitive, beautifully written, and masterly biography’, it makes for essential reading for any Jan Morris enthusiast.
Some of you may already know that Jan Morris’s excellent memoir Conundrum is available as a Slightly Foxed Edition. In 1972 James Morris booked a return ticket to Casablanca and underwent what would now be called gender reassignment surgery. Soon afterwards Jan Morris wrote a book about what it had felt like to live – or try to live – for forty odd years with the absolute conviction that she was a woman trapped in a man’s body, and how this agony had finally been resolved.
After Oxford, and service in Intelligence during the Second World War, James Morris became a daring foreign reporter who scooped news of the first ascent of Everest in 1953. During the 1950s and ’60s Morris also produced a succession of brilliant travel books, the most famous of which capture the spirit of ancient cities such as Venice and Oxford, as well as the great trilogy on the history of the British Empire, Pax Britannica.
Conundrum is a moving and often humorous dispatch from an inner world of which the great majority of us will have no experience. It is not, as its author emphasizes, about sex, but about soul.
Please scroll on to read the first chapter of Conundrum, explore our reading recommendations and see a message from Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler, with a special offer for Slightly Foxed newsletter subscribers.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Isabel, Rebecca, Edie, Ruth & Jennie
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