Jan Morris: A Life Author: Sara WheelerISBN-13: 978-0571379453Publisher: Faber & FaberGuideline Price: £25; 414ppDuring her lifetime Jan Morris broke historic news from across the world, wrote openly of her transition from male to female in the early 1970s, and went on to publish 60 books. Morris died in 2020, followed by her life-long partner Elizabeth in 2024. This biography races through a long, complicated life lasting 94 years. Morris’s career was a whirligig of journalism, travel and writing about a vast array of topics. As the Times correspondent in 1953, Morris was chosen to report on the ascent of Everest, scooping other journalists with news of the first conquest. There were numerous contradictions in her life and writing. She authored a broadly sympathetic trilogy on the British Empire but became a fervent Welsh nationalist; she disliked the monarchy, yet later accepted a CBE; she was a preacher of kindness with a cruel side. To get close to her subject, Wheeler slept in Morris’s bed in her cottage at Llanystumdwy in northwest Wales, thinking, “I could actually enter into her unconscious life as well as her physical one by dreaming versions of her dreams.” Some of Wheeler’s phraseology has a carelessness that editors should have amended. After the second World War, when British intelligence believed that the Soviet Union was bent on global domination, Wheeler states, “The civilised world might shortly disappear under a tide of commie horribleness”; when discussing the first newsreels of German concentration camps she declares, “The ovens of Auschwitz were still blazing at full capacity”, and “an IRA bomb blew Mountbatten to bits”. [ Jan Morris obituary: Celebrated writer of place and historyOpens in new window ]Rather than tackle all of Morris’s books, the author summarises just one-third of the total collection. While there are 31 pages of source notes, the biography lacks a select bibliography of books consulted, nor is there a bibliography of Morris’s complete works. Wheeler is uncertain about how best to sum up Morris’s skill, stating, “She was among the finest descriptive writers who ever lived” while in the next paragraph she says, “Few would put Morris in the very top rank as a writer”. Many of her books, including those on Venice and Trieste, as well as her imperial trilogy, stand the test of time and will continue to divide opinion.Paul Clements is the author of Jan Morris: Life from Both Sides, A Biography