28/11/2020
Jan Morris, the travel writer, journalist and historian, has been mourned this week on her passing on at the age of ninety four. In 1972, Morris transitioned to female, telling the New York Times, “it was inevitable, I'd been heading there mentally my whole life”. Morris's career was stellar, according to the Guardian. She covered the story of the conquest of Mount Everest in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay. She served the Allies during World War Two, serving in the army as an intelligence officer working in Palestine. In 1956, her investigative journalism helped to expose the French military's secret involvement in the Suez Conflict, a scandal that ultimately brought down both French and British governments of the day. Morris, who was born in 1926, always felt that there was a part missing from her male identity and her transition in Casablanca in 1972 is recorded in her best selling book “Conundrum”. It was criticised in some literary quarters by transphobic figures, but the public loved it. Jan herself said that people in her hometime were totally supportive. “I put it down to kindness,” she told the Observer in 2020. “Just that. Everything good in the world is kindness.” Morris went on other journeys through her personal life too. She was born in Clevedon on the North Somerset coast, but lived her later life in North Wales, the land of her father's birth where she embraced the ancient culture and literature of the country. She was elected to the Gorsedd, the Welsh cultural institution, in 1992. In her later years, Jan also noted that she was always the person she was meant to be. “My transition changed me far less than I thought it had” she remarked. Morris remained married to her wife Eilzabeth, although they were forced to get a divorce from their heterosexual marriage and later had a civil partnership ceremony. Her son, Twm, announced her death on Friday. “This morning at 11.40 at Ysbyty Bryn Beryl, on the Llyn Peninsula, in North Wales., the author and traveller Jan Morris began her greatest journey. She leaves behind on the shore her lifelong partner, Elizabeth,” he wrote. Fair winds, Jan, from all of us here. That's Jan Morris, groundbreaking journalist, travel writer and trans woman, who has passed on at the age of 94.