Jan Morris

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a writer. A period of soldiering led to a successful career as a journalist. He scooped the world with the story of the conquering of Everest, and then as an author, particularly of travel books, including a hugely acclaimed portrait of Venice. He married and fathered five children. All this he did as a man, but for the last thirty years has lived as a woman, describing her sex change in another famous book, Conundrum.

Presenter0:55

Today, at seventy-five, this eminent historian of the British Empire, shortlisted Booker Prize novelist, recognized as one of the best descriptive writers in English alive today, claims to be bored with literary life and its attendant noise. But the noise, of course, continues. After all, as she says herself, you must forgive me for saying this, but my life has been interesting. She is Jan Morris. Not just interesting, Jan, fascinating, but of course many of your books I suppose almost all of them, really, and you've written more than forty.

Presenter1:26

Are about yourself in many ways, aren't they? When they are about cities, they are about your reactions to that city or that place.

Jan Morris1:32

They're all terribly self-indulgent. They always have been ever since the beginning. But luckily for me, perhaps people don't always realize it. They think they're straight descriptive books about places, about cities, or even about history, when they're rarely books about the effect that history has had upon me, and the effect that cities have upon my particular sensibility.

Presenter1:52

And and you don't like them being called travel books for that reason, really, do you? Because when you're writing about wherever it is, Manhattan or Venice or Canada or Hong Kong or Sydney

Presenter2:02

It's how, as we say, it impinges on your sensibility. It is it's not a guide book. You're trying to do all the things that normal travellers don't do.

Jan Morris2:09

The last thing I want people to suppose is that what I've described in the book is what they're going to find. What I've described in the book is what I've seen, you know.

Presenter2:16

Well what happened?

Jan Morris2:16

Oh, what happened to me, exactly.

Presenter2:18

So the visit to the dentist or the smell down by the river.

Jan Morris2:21

All that is grift from my mill. Not everybody wants to go to the dentist in Uzbekistan, do they?

Presenter2:22

And not every

Presenter2:26

Probably not a good idea.

Presenter2:28

Except that your last book, and you you've said in fact it is your last book, the last book you're going to do, Trieste, is different because it is entirely subjective. It is overtly, isn't it, subjective?

Jan Morris2:40

It's it's really ego biography.

Presenter2:43

But why? Why do you identify with Trieste of all places?

Jan Morris2:47

Triess has has always had a particular place in my life. It was the first city.

Jan Morris2:51

that I ever lived in as an adult. And I say lived there, I wasn't a citizen of the place, but I was there in the army. And from the very beginning it had a strange effect upon me. Of course it was just at the end of the war. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen to it. It was bang on the fissure between East and West. It was the bottom end of the Iron Curtain.

Speaker 22:55

Uh

Speaker 12:55

Uh

Jan Morris3:09

And so there were disputes between the Communist Bloc and the Western Bloc, whatever you call that, democratic bloc, I suppose. There were disputes between Italy and and the New Yugoslavia. And the whole place was in a state of limbo. And that is the state it's in for me still.

Presenter3:24

Limbo.

Jan Morris3:25

Dimba.

Presenter3:25

Fold fold in the map.

Jan Morris3:27

A fold in the map exactly, just like poor old General Slim, who said all his battlefields were on folds in the map.

Presenter3:33

And a melancholy place, a sweet melancholy.

Jan Morris3:36

Well this is how it affects me.

Presenter3:38

Well, you say it affects you, but you also seem to identify with it, because you say the book sees the city as me and me as the city.

Presenter3:45

You're saying that you're also a fold in the map. You're saying you're also in limbo.

Jan Morris3:48

You're also limber

Jan Morris3:49

Yes, a bit putting a bit high to say I'm in limbo, I must say. But I'm a bit of a hiatus. I'm a permanent compromise. You know, that's obviously.

Presenter3:56

You know, that's obvious, really. Except that that that that in Conundrum after you had the sex change operation you actually said I had found identity. So I wonder, you know, if can you be both?

Jan Morris4:07

I think I was wrong. Well, no, I found an identity, but my identity is compromise.

Jan Morris4:12

Does that make sense, dear?

Presenter4:13

Uh-huh.

Jan Morris4:14

Yes. I I know what I am, all right, and I've lived happily ever after but I can't pretend that I'm exactly one thing or the other, and in the same way Trieste isn't one thing or the other. We're both on that fissure, as you say, fold on the map, and I'm perfectly happy with that, and I think Trieste is, as a matter of fact.

Jan Morris4:33

And so I feel especially happy in and comfortable in Trieste.

Jan Morris4:39

Well the first record

Jan Morris4:40

Is

Jan Morris4:41

By Irving Berlin. All the records I've chosen by Irving Berlin. When you get to a certain age, you're always looking back to another earlier time. The golden age, people used to call it. And nowadays people always call it a lost age of innocence. I don't believe one age is more innocent than the other. But I do think that the years of my youth

Jan Morris5:02

were more simple than they are now. When you get old, you begin to pine a bit for simplicity. I've lived an involved and rather sophisticated life, and now I more and more like the feeling of that past period. And one of the symptoms of that age of simplicity was that everybody liked the same popular music, and the exemplar of this popular music

Jan Morris5:23

The great exemplar was Irving Berlin. He tapped that particular vein of popular emotion. I've been a soldier quite a while, and I would like to stay

Jan Morris5:35

Yeah.

Speaker 15:35

The life is simply wonderful. The army food is great.

Speaker 15:39

I sleep with 97 others in a wooden hut.

Speaker 15:43

I love them all, they all love me. It's very Lovely button.

Jan Morris5:48

Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning.

Speaker 15:51

Morning.

Speaker 15:53

Oh, how I'd love to remain in bed

Speaker 25:57

For the hardest blow of all is to hear the bugle.

Presenter6:00

Irving Berlin and Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning from the show This Is the Army and you say Mr. Berlin was the first American you met.

Jan Morris6:09

Well, I I think he was. He's certainly one of the very first. I had a sort of gap year between leaving school. I'd volunteered for the army, and they couldn't take me till I was of a certain age seventeen, I think. And so I had a few months to kill, and I went and worked unpaid, as a matter of fact, for a paper in Bristol.

Jan Morris6:25

And I did some awful things, I can tell you, mostly very boring things. But the the one amusing thing I did have to do was to go and interview American stars who came in then to entertain the American troops who were in Britain.'Cause this was the middle of the war. Yes, it was. It was forty f

Presenter6:37

Because this was the middle of the war.

Jan Morris6:39

One aspect.

Jan Morris6:40

And one of the ones I met was Irving Berlin.

Presenter6:41

No

Presenter6:44

But he he of course was the first of many famous people that you went on to meet as a journalist. The list is incredibly impressive. Cheguvara, I think Guy Burgess. J

Jan Morris6:55

True, yes. I I forget all the things. I later gave up even trying to meet famous people. I discovered they didn't really tell me anything very much anyway.

Presenter7:02

Kim Philby, of course, you met and and you've written about you said when you wrote on you you could have loved him and you're not of course the first person to say that. Why? What was so fascinating about him?

Jan Morris7:13

I mean there was something.

Jan Morris7:14

Rather charismatically strange about him and I think nearly everybody felt it. As a matter of fact, I'm not the only one who said he could love Kim Philby.

Presenter7:20

No f

Presenter7:22

You covered so many big international stories the the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, the Gary Powers case, Suez, and so on. But of course your biggest scoop was one that came very early on, wasn't it? Which was the conquering of Everest. You were there. Why were you the only journalist on the mountain?

Jan Morris7:39

I was, because I worked for the Times, and the Times had provided the finance, or most of the finance anyway, and so it had the right to

Presenter7:46

What for the expedition?

Jan Morris7:47

Yes, for the exhibition itself.

Presenter7:48

To the expedition itself. So how far up did you go up the mountain?

Jan Morris7:51

It gets higher every year.

Jan Morris7:54

But it was uh between camp four and camp five, I think it was twenty three thousand, twenty four thousand, something like that. Long way from the top, you know.

Presenter7:59

I was going to say hi what's the top I should know but I don't.

Jan Morris8:03

That goes up too, as a matter of fact, but it was then twenty nine thousand and two.

Presenter8:08

Oh, so you're a long way up?

Jan Morris8:10

Oh yes, I'm not sure.

Presenter8:10

And how did you get the news down?

Presenter8:13

Do you have a radio?

Jan Morris8:14

No, we weren't allowed to have radios. It it was a difficult situation like it is now on that frontier. So we weren't allowed to take any long range radio transmitter. We had very heavy walkie talkies to use on the mountain, but that was all.

Jan Morris8:27

So the problem, of course, was to get news back to a cable head somewhere and get it back to the Times in London. But

Speaker 18:31

Get it.

Jan Morris8:33

I discovered

Jan Morris8:34

when I got to Everest, that on the frontier there the Indian army maintained a little radio post to keep an eye on the movement of Chinese troops over the other side of the frontier.

Jan Morris8:45

And I thought to myself, Well, I've got to use this thing to get the actual last message of failure or success back to London.

Jan Morris8:55

But I knew that if I told the Indians what I was doing, they too

Jan Morris9:01

I'm sure. I don't blame them either. They would have sold the news to somebody else, wouldn't they? So, what I did was I devised a code.

Jan Morris9:07

In which a message appeared to be not in code. Not exactly Enigma, you know. Fairly simple stuff, but nevertheless.

Presenter9:14

What did you say? Do you remember?

Jan Morris9:17

Well, I remember the thing which said that Everett's had been climbed.

Jan Morris9:21

for which the code was snow conditions bad, and then the next one was advanced base abandoned and I think that meant uh Hillary. And then there was a phrase for ten sing too, so that they knew and the date, so that in London they'd know when it was climbed, who had climbed it. And it ended all well, just to show us everything was all well. And so I sent it through them and it got to Kapmando and then it was passed on, as a matter of fact, to the British Embassy.

Jan Morris9:49

Who sent it to London?

Presenter9:50

On Coronation Day.

Jan Morris9:52

On Coronation Eve. Yes, it went it it appeared in the paper on the morning of Coronation Day. It's rather interesting point that I my name wasn't mentioned because the Times was anonymous in those days.

Presenter9:57

Dang.

Jan Morris10:05

I nearly killed myself getting down the mountain with the news and they wouldn't even credit it.

Presenter10:09

But wonderfully romantic stuff. And it does strike me r reading about your life and all the things you've done i i that that it there is a huge romance to it all isn't there b and and again maybe being a journalist in in the middle of the twentieth century being a foreign correspondent before you know the the great swift technologies that we have now was ultimately very romantic and that was i think a large part of the appeal perhaps was it

Jan Morris10:34

It was for me, certainly. Yes, and I I hate to say this, it sounds conceited, but I think uh my feeling of romance got into the prose. I think you felt that this character was enjoying himself then.

Presenter10:46

He was.

Jan Morris10:46

And he was. And I certainly was, yes. Echo number two.

Jan Morris10:51

Reco Minter is is is Al Johnson's has no particular reference to me, it's just that I've always been entertained by Al Johnson and I like the song, Let Me Sing and I'm Happy and I agree with that too.

Speaker 111:01

Uh

Jan Morris11:01

Let me sing. A funny song with crazy words that roll along. And if my song can start you laughing, I'm happy.

Jan Morris11:14

Yeah.

Speaker 111:16

Let me sing a sad re

Jan Morris11:18

Refrain of broken hearts who love in vain And if my song can start you crying, I'm a hand

Jan Morris11:29

Uh

Presenter11:29

Uh

Presenter11:30

Al Jolson and Let Me Sing and I'm Happy from Mammy. So, Jan, you were born in the mid-twenties in Somerset, the youngest of three boys. And beyond that, you don't particularly like talking about your childhood. Can I ask you why that is, simply?

Jan Morris11:45

Well, it's chiefly because it was an entirely happy childhood. I had a marvelous time. And all through my later life people have been trying to find Freudian reasons for my particular predicament. I don't believe in them anymore, and I so I've given up talking about my childhood. Except my boyhood. I don't mind talking about that. I went to as a chorister to Christchurch, Oxford. And this is where my life began, because for me it was a kind of show business, you know. It uh it wasn't like going to school at all, it was something quite different.

Presenter12:15

How many of you were there?

Jan Morris12:17

Well, there were sixteen who were actually in the choir. We sang every day in the cathedral, and that's an extraordinary experience for a small child, you know.

Presenter12:24

And you went there when you were eight to board. You you have said and you've written in Conundrum that that uh by the time you were five, before that, it it was totally ingrained in you that you should have been a girl. And indeed you prayed at that just before

Jan Morris12:38

Yeah.

Presenter12:40

Really earlier too.

Jan Morris12:42

The air is certainly.

Presenter12:43

How would you know at such a small age?

Jan Morris12:45

I don't know. I have no explanation for it. I've uh uh even in the book Conundrum I I admitted I had no explanation for it. I've always myself thought it was some spiritual thing. Really?

Presenter12:54

Right.

Presenter12:55

Yeah.

Jan Morris12:55

I do

Presenter12:55

And you certainly have talked all the way through, and in a way, Trieste says it again, doesn't it? Because Trieste.

Presenter13:03

Uh the part of the title is the meaning of nowhere, and you talk all the way through even when you're at that school about slightly

Presenter13:09

loitering on the outside, a sort of nowhere nice.

Jan Morris13:10

Yes, I I've always felt myself an outsider. And that part I haven't minded, you know, generally speaking.

Presenter13:17

But it must have been a very odd um schoolboyhood, as it were, to uh as you put it, loiter in an inconsequential way, as as if I were intangible.

Jan Morris13:27

Yes, it is. But of course it was helped by the fact that much of this was lived in the atmosphere of an ancient cathedral. I was profoundly affected by by Christchurch and by Oxford University. I went back to Christchurch as an undergraduate and now I'm an honorary student, which I mean an honorary fellow in the college.

Presenter13:41

Final

Presenter13:45

In between all that, you went to Lansing, didn't you? To Public School, but then again, loitering on the outside, it seems to me from reading what you've written. But then you went you joined the army and you say, At last I felt I was free. Uh it just seems incredible out of all places someone who's not sure about their maleness should feel sort of free and at ease.

Speaker 213:52

Yeah.

Jan Morris13:52

Yeah.

Speaker 213:52

Britain

Presenter14:05

Surely not in the army in wartime.

Jan Morris14:08

Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you?

Presenter14:08

Yes, yes.

Jan Morris14:10

Entirely due to the people I was with, I suppose. I felt strange at home there.

Jan Morris14:15

By being accepted as an outsider in amongst them a regular soldier's.

Jan Morris14:20

Nobody thought I was anything like them, right? I couldn't pretend to be, you know.

Jan Morris14:24

Uh I I was on the fringe of that, and I was accepted as being on the fringe. I think I made many good friends in the Knights Lancers, they were very, very kind to me.

Presenter14:32

Tell me about record number three.

Jan Morris14:35

Record number three is about America. Again, America has played a very large part in my life. And this is the most New Yorky song that Irving Boleyn ever wrote. Every year since nineteen fifty three I've been to New York.

Presenter14:50

To Manhattan.

Jan Morris14:50

So Manhattan, so I've always felt I have one foot in Manhattan and one foot in Flannistinbury, the Welsh village where I live. And this song, which is purely New York, I've loved for that reason.

Presenter14:57

We're highly

Jan Morris15:05

We stop at the best hotels, But we prefer the country far away from the city smells.

Jan Morris15:18

We're a couple of sports.

Jan Morris15:20

The Pride and the Tennis Courts.

Jan Morris15:23

In June, July, and August we look cute when we're dressed in short.

Presenter15:31

Judy Garland and Fred Astaire singing We're a Couple of Swells from Easter Parade. So Jan Morris, you were demobbed. You worked briefly as a reporter in Cairo for an Arab news agency and then you went up to Oxford to read English back to Christchurch. And by this time you were married. You were 23 years old, I think. Married to Elizabeth. Why? It seems kind of almost perverse considering your dilemma.

Jan Morris15:46

Yeah.

Jan Morris15:48

Right here, yeah.

Presenter15:54

About male, female, that you should marry. It's almost to reaffirm your masculinity, as it were, or your maleness.

Jan Morris16:02

Didn't feel like that at the time in the least.

Presenter16:04

But you you you told Elizabeth um

Presenter16:08

everything at that point, didn't you? Was she the first person you told?

Jan Morris16:09

Yeah.

Jan Morris16:12

Is she right?

Presenter16:13

And and w why was she? I mean, what was it about Elizabeth that was different?

Jan Morris16:19

Well, we um I'm not enjoying this bit, but um I'll tell you uh I suppose it's because we immediately sort of clicked, you know. We became great friends, that's the thing. It wasn't just a marriage of the normal sort of marriage of love and sex, it was also a marriage of friendship.

Jan Morris16:37

We were friends from the very beginning, and so I I wouldn't have had any secrets from her anyway.

Presenter16:42

Okay.

Jan Morris16:42

And I don't know if she had any from me at any exam.

Presenter16:44

I suppose she in that sense then she

Presenter16:47

deserves a lot of credit in all of this because she

Jan Morris16:48

Oh, of course, absolutely, of course.

Presenter16:50

She was, I think you again you wrote the the the key to the latch of your conundrum.

Jan Morris16:55

Yes, she was, and has remained so, you know. We we're still together after fifty years, so

Presenter16:57

Yeah.

Jan Morris17:00

She she must have a lot to her, mustn't she?

Presenter17:02

Hmm.

Jan Morris17:03

To put up with me all these years.

Presenter17:04

And she she seems to have known again, you you you've written this, she knew that ultimately you would undergo a sex change before you did.

Jan Morris17:13

Well, I I don't know if she really knew. You know, we s I don't know about you, we slide into these great things, don't we, without really knowing too much about it, especially if it's a mystery of this sort that we neither of us really understood.

Presenter17:26

And that

Jan Morris17:26

I I think perhaps she instinctively knew that it was going to happen sooner or later.

Presenter17:30

But first there were children to be had.

Jan Morris17:33

Yeah.

Presenter17:33

How big a'cause you had five in the end. How how big a decision was that to have children, knowing, obviously, that at some point something quite dramatic might happen?

Jan Morris17:33

Uh

Jan Morris17:43

I don't know, you seem to see the whole thing far more in black and white than we ever did. Of course, of course we did.

Presenter17:48

Yeah.

Jan Morris17:50

I don't know, it just happened.

Presenter17:51

It just sort of rolled on and and happened.

Jan Morris17:52

And you had

Presenter17:55

Five children ultimately, as I say, although one sadly died.

Jan Morris17:58

Yeah.

Presenter17:59

And again, in every other way, it doesn't seem to have been a conventional life either, because you lived on houseboats in Venice with little children and uh houseboat in Cairo, is that right?

Jan Morris18:11

Houseboat in Cairo, yes, which we'd uh taken from Lord Montgomery's sister. During the war Montgomery used to come back on brief visits from Alamein to stay with his sister on the Heisbert on the Nile, and it was only after the war that they discovered on the next door Heisberg were a couple of German spies throughout the war.

Presenter18:31

So life was always fun in that sense,'cause you travelled coast to coast across America as well and wrote your first book about it.

Jan Morris18:37

Yes, I went on a fellowship to America.

Presenter18:37

I went.

Jan Morris18:39

and uh we had a year there, most of which was travelling.

Presenter18:42

So you were very, very happy at one level, but then deeply unhappy at another?

Jan Morris18:47

Yeah. That's right. You've got it right at last.

Jan Morris18:50

Black and white

Presenter18:51

Black and white though.

Jan Morris18:51

Yeah.

Presenter18:53

Uh

Presenter18:54

Record number four.

Jan Morris18:56

Oh, this is old Frank Sinatra. I always really like Sinatra like everybody else really, and I like the song. For obvious reasons, I've got my love to keep me warm.

Speaker 119:04

The snow

Jan Morris19:05

Always know him.

Jan Morris19:08

And the wind is blowing.

Jan Morris19:12

But I will weather the storm What do I care how much?

Jan Morris19:21

Yeah.

Speaker 119:21

It may storm.

Speaker 119:25

I've got my love to keep me warm.

Jan Morris19:28

Boom.

Presenter19:31

Frank Sinatra and I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm. So by the early sixties, Jan Morris, the world professionally was at your feet, wasn't it? You were known on both sides of the Atlantic. You'd you'd written your first book, if not a few more, I think by then. You were very much in demand. Glittering careers were on offer. From all kinds of well, who who was offering you what?

Jan Morris19:51

After I'd been in America there was a new ambassador going, Harakatya, and he he wondered if I'd like to go with him as a sort of PA, you know. It was thought at the time that that if I wanted to I could take that job and probably slip over to the Foreign Service and spend a career in diplomacy, which I would have been hopeless at anyway.

Presenter20:10

And television, of course, was offering you opportunities.

Jan Morris20:12

Yes, at the time at that time it was very easy for for journalists to get into television because ITN was starting and they were looking around for young people who could do it. And I did a certain amount of television journalism for the BBC too.

Presenter20:20

And I did.

Presenter20:23

You did a panorama or bits of a panorama.

Jan Morris20:25

I did bits of panorama and I did uh some quite long essays too for ITN about South America and about Oxford for the matter of

Presenter20:28

S

Presenter20:33

So there you were. You know, it was all at your feet. A glittering career was there for you to choose, really. Why did you decide not to choose it? Why did you decide, age thirty five, to turn your back on it all?

Jan Morris20:45

I got a bit tired of the world. I'd seen a lot of it, and especially you know, most of my journalistic career was in the Middle East, which then as now was in a state of flux and anxiety. I didn't much like that world, and I I decided to get out of it and be on my own.

Presenter21:01

I'm going to quote you again because you said that that that actually to stay with that world was repugnant to me, which is a bit stronger than you just said.

Jan Morris21:11

I think you you you go back to this.

Jan Morris21:15

this central theme of my life more than it deserves. It's quite true, I did say you're quoting from Conundrum, I did say it was repugnant to me, which was true. I I just got tired of the whole racket of

Jan Morris21:29

of impending wars or threatened wars and squalors.

Jan Morris21:34

all very unpleasant things that I then thought of as being particularly masculine of nature. Now I have to feel I rather change my views about that. I think women have probably behave in rather the same way. But then it was men who were doing all these things and I didn't like it. I didn't want to be part of it. I wanted to be even more separate from it. As it was, I was only onlooking.

Speaker 221:50

Yeah.

Presenter21:50

Yeah.

Jan Morris21:56

But I was in it and I I didn't want to be.

Presenter21:58

But certainly that age of thirty-five was a kind of watershed, wasn't it? It was a turning point.

Jan Morris22:04

Yes, it was, yes.

Presenter22:05

And I know you'll say I'm going back to the court too much, but certainly it does seem to be that, because that was also the point, wasn't it?

Presenter22:13

If you like to divide your life up, you spent thirty-five years as a man, and then there was a sort of intervening ten years where you

Presenter22:20

Moved towards a kind of androgyny because you decided to do something physical about it, and then you've spent.

Jan Morris22:26

The rest of her life.

Presenter22:27

The rest of your life as a woman. And so it it was it was all pretty.

Jan Morris22:27

Life is a woman.

Jan Morris22:30

I think thirty-five is probably a turning point in everybody's life, don't you? They say physically it's the peak. And most people at thirty-five know what they're going to do in one way or another, and I knew what I was going to do in a particular way. We don't always know we're going to do something very so dramatic. As radical as that, I agree with you.

Presenter22:44

We don't always know we're going to do something dramatic.

Jan Morris22:50

But it is an age, isn't it? We we we have time to think about things and look ahead and look back to

Presenter22:57

Record number five.

Jan Morris22:58

And this is Louis Armstrong.

Jan Morris23:01

I'm putting all my eggs in one basket. I always liked El Satchma. But I must say about this record I wish she sang it a bit faster.

Jan Morris23:09

But this is how he wanted to sing and here goes.

Speaker 223:12

I'm putting all my eggs in one basket.

Speaker 223:19

I'm betting everything I've got on you.

Speaker 223:25

I'm giving all my love to one baby.

Speaker 223:32

Lord help me if my baby don't come through.

Speaker 223:37

I've got a great big amount saved up in my

Presenter23:41

Louis Armstrong and I'm putting all my eggs in one basket. So

Jan Morris23:41

Yeah.

Presenter23:46

Straddling lit in the literary sense the divide between Maurice the Man and and Morris the Woman is your trilogy Pax Britannica, because you wrote some before and some after, didn't you, the about the rise and fall of the British Empire from

Speaker 123:56

And the

Jan Morris23:57

The shemp

Presenter23:58

Victoria's accession to Churchill's death. What it has again, th what what is very central to it, is that kind of swagger, doesn't it? I mean, the empire at its height has a kind of

Jan Morris24:01

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:08

swagger about it. And and you like it again, I'm thinking about you a book you wrote about um Jack Fisher, the first sea lord at the uh outbreak of the First World War. Again, you know, a a kind of swaggering man, a lot of bravado. That's what appeals to you.

Jan Morris24:17

PS

Jan Morris24:19

Swap

Jan Morris24:21

Yes, yes, it was his face that fascinated me. The book is called Fisher's Face. I thought for years I'd like to write a book about this man, and I cherished the idea for really for forty years, and then at last I did it.

Presenter24:33

Mm. And you said that he he played life as an artist might play it, which is

Jan Morris24:37

Hmm.

Presenter24:38

Again, I'm going to come back to you. In a way, perhaps you've done a bit of that. You've quite enjoyed the slight social dangers that you've created for yourself.

Jan Morris24:47

That's the nicest thing you've said in this programme.

Jan Morris24:51

I do like to think that I've played Life Like an Artist, not always successfully, believe me but I like to think that I've played it as if I were composing a book a book that has its flat moments certainly but on the whole, for me just for me I haven't read right for anybody else but for me

Jan Morris25:07

It does have a a certain style to it that I've enjoyed and like still.

Presenter25:12

Record number six.

Jan Morris25:14

Oh, this is a true belting out thing by dear old Ethel Merman. It's one of Irving Berlin's best songs, I think. I've Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night. And I first heard it after the war when Anna Get Your Gun, from which the song comes, went on in London.

Jan Morris25:31

I'd never been to an American musical ever in my life performed. Somebody else and I went and sat in the Gods and heard this. She wasn't singing it, I don't think. But I remember the song very well, and I've always liked it, and I like its emotion, too. It's full of joie de vive, and a bit of swagger too.

Speaker 125:47

Got no diamond, got no pearl. Still I think I'm a lucky girl. I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

Speaker 225:55

SAH

Speaker 125:58

Got no mansion, got no yacht. Still I'm happy with what I got. I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. Sunshine gives me a lovely day.

Jan Morris26:12

May I lovely dad?

Presenter26:15

Ethel Merman singing I Got the Sun in the Morning.

Presenter26:18

So you travelled, Jan Morris, in the summer of nineteen seventy two, exactly thirty years ago, this year actually, to that clinic in Casablanca for the operation that would make you a woman. I suppose

Presenter26:29

The reaction everyone has, and you must know this because I know you've been asked to talk about it so many times, is how brave. Why would you go to

Presenter26:38

You know, a clinic you don't know to be operated on by a surgeon you don't know who only does it for cash up front. I mean, you must have been very frightened.

Jan Morris26:47

You know, all this is a blur in my mind. But there was something faintly romantic, was there not, going to Casablanca in Morocco for this thing.

Jan Morris26:58

And the surgeon was a very dashing, elegant young Frenchman.

Jan Morris27:02

Full of child.

Jan Morris27:04

and uh suavity.

Jan Morris27:06

There was music on in the street outside, Arabic music, which I love, which came through the window as I lay there waiting for this thing. So in my memory I wasn't in the Disprint and I don't think I was then either. I I was quite determined this was the necessary thing to do, and so I just went and did it, you know.

Presenter27:25

And it brought you certainly um relief, I think, didn't it?

Jan Morris27:30

Oh, of course, yes.

Presenter27:31

Well, you say, of course. Well, that that's a very difficult thing for people to understand, particularly men, I suppose. I mean, to have your.

Jan Morris27:32

Oh no.

Jan Morris27:39

Well, you know, for ten years or something I'd been gradually moving in this direction. I'd been having treatment for one sort or another. So naturally when it came to an end, it was a a great relief, yes, and I

Presenter27:50

Drive.

Jan Morris27:51

I felt I could just be myself so I've remained ever since.

Presenter27:53

So you hear

Presenter27:54

You've never had any regrets about that.

Jan Morris27:56

No, no, not Ron.

Presenter27:57

It is um

Presenter28:00

Less of a phenomenon today, of course, for that of the transsexual, you know, and and and

Jan Morris28:04

You know

Presenter28:06

I think you've made the point that these days it's been discovered that it's not just all in the mind. There are physiological reasons as well, are there not?

Jan Morris28:13

Yes, that's right. So I'm told. I don't know anything about it. I mean, I can't see inside my mind, my brain. For me.

Jan Morris28:19

I didn't always think of it as a physiological thing at all. I thought of it as a spiritual and a metaphysical thing, and I still do.

Presenter28:26

I presume people have opened up the the brains of dead trans existence.

Jan Morris28:30

Big transigning. Yes, they're not all that number whose brains can be opened up.

Jan Morris28:36

They welcome Drop Not Mine when the time comes.

Presenter28:39

But you also make the point that although such an operation is now much more easily available, there are fewer takers. Now, why would that be?

Jan Morris28:46

B. I didn't say that. I don't know if there are fewer takers. I would assume there would be. Because the the sexes have slightly balanced out, haven't they? And for those people who deliberately

Jan Morris28:57

and intellectually thought of their position as either a man or a woman, which I didn't. I can see that there might not be such a compulsion.

Presenter29:04

Two.

Jan Morris29:04

To change.

Presenter29:05

There's more over there's more of an overlap between the sexes, isn't there? And and less stereotyping. I mean, it seems to me that's what you suffered from to a very large extent was stereotyping, isn't it?

Jan Morris29:08

There is a

Speaker 129:14

Draw it.

Presenter29:15

So you say now that it's all a blur, really? I mean, I'm really inviting you to.

Presenter29:22

To say why you don't like talking about it so much. And I suppose I understand because you've talked about it so much over the years or been required to.

Jan Morris29:29

Well, it isn't only that. It also is because people try to define something which is indefinable in my view. I've never myself tried to analyse this thing. I've just accepted it as it came.

Jan Morris29:43

And I did the right thing, I'm sure.

Jan Morris29:45

And so to try, all these years later, too, to try and pin down exactly what it was, exactly what I felt, why I did this, when I did so and so, jars with me.

Jan Morris29:56

It's like trying to define a piece of music by Debussy. Instead of just having woodland scenes and the rustle of leaves and animals and fawns going through the wood, you're asked to say, What kind of tree is that? What is that animal?

Jan Morris30:13

I I prefer to be in the Bruce's wood.

Presenter30:17

Next piece of music.

Jan Morris30:18

This is partly patriotism.

Jan Morris30:21

The best known Welshman of our time, I suppose, is Bryntew, the opera singer. One of the best, but Tom Jones, another one.

Presenter30:28

Tom Jens.

Jan Morris30:30

Brin Tevo lives up the road from me. I admire him very much. And so I thought I was going to have uh what is, I think, perhaps serving Berlin's one of two most sentimental songs, which is White Christmas. And I thought I'd like to have it sung by this great Welshman.

Speaker 230:51

Have a wide Christmas.

Speaker 230:57

Just like the ones I used to.

Jan Morris30:57

Strike the one

Jan Morris31:04

Where the tree drops to the sun and chilly side.

Speaker 231:07

Top screw is

Presenter31:14

Bryn Turville singing White Christmas. Bryn Turville from your beloved Wales. A place to which you said you're emotionally enthrall. Why so?

Jan Morris31:24

Well, I'm half Welsh, you know. My father was Welsh, my mother is English. But I've always preferred the Welsh side of me. I find it more romantic and mysterious and strange. Also I love the landscape of the country.

Presenter31:35

But that whole family and Wales and your books are

Presenter31:40

Then well they're just you, aren't they? They're very much what you feel.

Jan Morris31:43

They are. They're really much, much the most important things in my life. Much more important than the thing, you know, this sex change business, which to the outside I know uh probably looks far more important than it does to me, because it's I'm never quite sure whether people are interested in me because of that particular fact or whether they're interested in me as a person, uh, you know, and as a writer too, it's difficult for me to know.

Presenter32:05

And there you live with Elizabeth. And in the cupboard under the stairs, you have the headstone for your grave ready and waiting.

Jan Morris32:12

You have read a lot about me.

Presenter32:14

Uh

Presenter32:15

What tell me what it says?

Jan Morris32:15

See what it says.

Jan Morris32:18

Here are two friends, Jan and Elizabeth Morris, at the end of one life, which uh has a double meaning, of course, because it implies that the life is shared between us. It's one life between the two of us. As a matter of fact, I don't believe in an after life, to be honest with you. But it could mean that too, couldn't it?

Presenter32:36

Indeed, and though it is waiting, does that mean, along with

Presenter32:39

your last book, you've said Trieste and and its sweet melancholy, that you're kind of a bit possessed by death these days.

Jan Morris32:46

I always have been. I've always been interested in death, because of course it's the great conundrum, isn't it?

Jan Morris32:52

None of us know the answer too.

Jan Morris32:54

Nowadays approaches, of course, it has a slightly different meaning for everybody. I used to I remember saying, Well, well, I wanted to die when I was forty.

Jan Morris33:04

But I've changed my mind about that.

Presenter33:05

Last record.

Jan Morris33:07

We're the last one. This is a pretty slushy collection of records, and this seems to be the slushiest of all. This is the song Always which Irving Berlin wrote as a wedding present for his wife.

Jan Morris33:20

And it means a lot to me, of course it does, because, you know, I've lived with the same friend for fifty years.

Jan Morris33:26

Which is jolly nearly always, isn't it? And I hope it will go on for always.

Jan Morris33:30

So um lots of people have recorded this. This is the most sentimental recording of all, I should think. It happens to be in German. So it's called Heimwehr, which means homesickness really, literally, but it also means a sort of yearning, which in Welsh is Hereit, which is a yearning for something we're not quite absolutely sure what it is, you know, which is I'm very strong on. On Hereits and longing for things that we I don't quite know where they are.

Jan Morris33:56

And this is Richard Dauber going the whole hog in this record in German of always.

Speaker 234:03

Back to the

Speaker 234:09

I'm not the one.

Speaker 234:16

Bettering's on early, so guys on the land, but I'll figure out something.

Speaker 134:21

Take it out of the crazy

Presenter34:32

Richard Tauber with the Deutsche Baeler Orchestra singing Heimweh, or Always as we know it. Now, if you could only take one of those Irving Berlineries, Jan Morris, which one would you take?

Jan Morris34:43

I think I'd probably take wear a couple of swells.

Presenter34:46

What about your book?

Jan Morris34:48

I'd like to take the Mabanogi, the Mabanogion, as it's more popularly called. It's one of the great works of medieval literary history. It's very funny and a very interesting and exciting book.

Presenter35:01

What about your luxury?

Jan Morris35:02

Well, the one rhythm I'd really have would be to have a record not by Irving Bernard.

Jan Morris35:09

But maybe that isn't allowed.

Presenter35:10

No, it isn't really,'cause then then everybody will want nine records.

Jan Morris35:11

Yeah.

Jan Morris35:14

Well in that case let me have a hot water bottle. Terrific.

Presenter35:17

Captain Morris, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Jan Morris35:20

Pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 235:28

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.