Sara Wheeler's Jan Morris Biography: A Masterly Life
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- Sara Wheeler has published an authorized biography of Jan Morris, the author of more than 50 books ranging across travel writing, biography, history, memoir, and fiction.
- Jan Morris, born James Morris in 1926, covered the 1953 Everest expedition for The Times, scooping the world with news of the British success while his wife Elizabeth gave birth at home.
- Morris underwent vaginoplasty in a Casablanca clinic in summer 1972 and signed a Faber contract the same month for her memoir Conundrum, receiving a £10,000 advance (about £118,000 in today's money).
- Germaine Greer wrote in the Evening Standard that Morris was "still to me a man who has eaten a great many pills"; the New York Times published a spoof about a woman transitioning into a horse and the BBC delivered an on-screen attack.
- Suki Morris, Jan's daughter, wrote after her mother's death that "she was a lousy parent who damaged all four of her living children one way or another," despite Morris preaching a "religion of kindness."
- Wheeler describes the biography as "a sensitive, beautifully written, and masterly" portrait, but one whose perspective "occasionally leaves Morris looking rather small."
Why it matters: Wheeler's biography gives readers the most complete reckoning yet with a writer long treated as a singular icon, refusing to simplify the contradiction between Morris's public warmth — a 'religion of kindness' — and her daughter Suki's verdict that she was 'a lousy parent' who damaged her four surviving children.
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