Often hailed as one of the best travel books ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history book, but a beautifully written immersion in Venetian life and character, set against the background of the city's past. Analysing the particular temperament of Venetians, as well as its waterways, its architecture, its bridges, its tourists, its curiosities, its smells, sounds, lights and colours, there is scarcely a corner of Venice that Jan Morris has not investigated and brought vividly to life. Jan Morris first visited the city of Venice as young James Morris, during World War II. As she writes in the introduction, 'it is Venice seen through a particular pair of eyes at a particular moment - young eyes at that, responsive above all to the stimuli of youth.' Venice is an impassioned work on this magnificent but often maddening city. Jan Morris's collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Sydney, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain and Manhattan '45. Since its first publication, Venice has appeared in many editions, won the W.H. Heinemann award and become an international bestseller. 'The best book about Venice ever written' Sunday Times 'No sensible visitor should visit the place without it . . . Venice stands alone as the essential introduction, and as a work of literature in its own right.' Observer

As one of Britain's best and most-loved travel writers, Jan Morris has led an extraordinary life. Perhaps her most remarkable work is this grippingly honest account of her ten-year transition from man to woman - its pains and joys, its frustrations and discoveries. On first publication in 1974, the book generated enormous interest around the world, and was chosen by The Times as one of the '100 Key Books of Our Time'.

'Peerless.' Daily Telegraph 'Sprinkled with magic.' Observer 'Full of mischief, romance, fun and kindness.' The Times Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, the Cuban Revolution and so much more. From reflections on identity and nations to the importance of good marmalade, Allegorizings is the final despatch from one of the greatest chroniclers of the twentieth century. 'A precious few [writers] report with wisdom, kindness and intelligence from the end to which we shall all come - travel of a different kind. This is such a book.' Sarah Moss, New York Times 'She was one of the most extraordinary people I ever had the luck to meet. Please read her.' Robert MacFarlane

Jan Morris tells the epic story of the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. In this celebrated masterwork she vividly evokes every aspect of the 'great adventure', ranging from ships and botanical gardens to hill stations and sugar plantations, as she traces the impact of empire on places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Fiji, Zululand and the Canadian prairies. The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together, these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is also world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'How many professional historians can write books that give so much pleasure? This is a book planned by an architect, fitted together by a craftsman, and polished by a cabinet-maker.' Sunday Times

The second instalment of the Pax Britannica Trilogy by Jan Morris, recreates the British Empire at its dazzling climax - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, celebrated as a festival of imperial strength, unity, and splendour. This classic work of history portrays a nation at the very height of its vigour and self-satisfaction, imposing on the rest of the world its traditions and tastes, its idealists and rascals. The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'In scholarship and humour this portrait of the British Empire before its decline and fall might, without undue optimism, be placed upon the same shelf as Edward Gibbon's history. As a survey of its subject, I doubt that Pax Britannica can ever, in this generation be surpassed.' Financial Times

'As a work of descripton and evocation The Market of Seleukia] is wonderful ... showing us the enthralling interplay of politics, avarice, hate, national pride, and religious fanaticism in that part of the globe.' "The New Yorker"

The Market of Seleukia is a portrait of the Middle East at the catalytic moment of the Suez Crisis. Jan Morris covers the vast, colourful and dramatic ground of Egypt and Sudan; Lebanon, Syria, Jordan; the Arabian Peninsula; Iraq and Iran. With superb liveliness and lucidity, she traces the complicated and shifting patterns in this most tangled of webs: the Anglo-American oil war; the American Soviet struggle for dominance; the explosive impact of Nasser's nationalism; irrigation and reclamation; Islam; Israel.

But Market of Seleukia is much more than political reporting: with wit, style and feeling, it captures the very texture of the Middle East. It is brilliantly observed and magnificently written, a book of major importance for today.

In 1955 the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, southeast of Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Sea, was a truly medieval Islamic State, shuttered against all progress under the aegis of its traditionalist and autocratic ruler. But it was also nearly the end of an imperial line, for in those days the British Government was still powerful in Arabia. Rumors of subversion and the intrigues of foreign powers mingled with the unsettling smell of oil to propel the sultan on a royal progress across the desert hinterland. It was an historic journey--the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar. Jan Morris accompanied His Highness as a professional observer, and was inspired by the experience to write her major work of imperial history, The Pax Britannica Trilogy.

Spain is one of the absolutes. Nothing is more compelling than the drama, at once dark and dazzling, of that theatre over the hills - the vast splendour of the Spanish landscape, the intensity of Spain's pride and misery, the adventurous glory of a history that set its seal upon half the world . . . Passionate, evocative and beautifully written, Spain is a companion to the country: its people, its history - and its character. First published in 1964 and no less compelling today, Jan Morris's classic work is back in print, bringing Spain, its glory and its tragedy, vividly to life. Jan Morris's collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan '45, A Writer's World and the Pax Britannica Trilogy. Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. 'The most evocative book ever written about Spain.' Independent

Jan Morris (then James) first visited Trieste as a soldier at the end of the Second World War. Since then, the city has come to represent her own life, with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Here, her thoughts on a host of subjects - ships, cities, cats, sex, nationalism, Jewishness, civility and kindness - are inspired by the presence of Trieste, and recorded in or between the lines of this book. Evoking the whole of its modern history, from its explosive growth to wealth and fame under the Habsburgs, through the years of Fascist rule to the miserable years of the Cold War, when rivalries among the great powers prevented its creation as a free city under United Nations auspices, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is neither a history nor a travel book; like the place, it is one of a kind. Jan Morris's collection of travel writing and reportage spans over five decades and includes such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, Manhattan '45, A Writer's World and the Pax Britannica Trilogy. Hav, her novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

When Jan Morris first visited the United States, she was overwhelmed (and irritated) by the national obsession with Abraham Lincoln: the homespun myth of the awkward six-foot-four country boy who rose to unite the nation seemed too good to be true. So she resolved to make up her own mind, visiting the landmarks of his life to do so: his log-cabin birthplace in Kentucky via Gettysburg and all the way to Washington theatre where he was assassinated. This remarkable book, blending fact, narrative and imagination, is the result. 'A little jewel-box of a book ... there are passages here which are pure gold... In an astonishingly short work, Jan Morris has conveyed the gawky but kindly expansiveness of the man and his country. If you have time to read only one book about Lincoln make it this one.' Spectator

Jan Morris spent the South African winter of 1957 touring the country for the "Guardian." This book, the product of her travels, was not a political treatise but an evocation of the atmosphere of apartheid, and an impression of life in South Africa at a time of great tension.

There are glimpses of the Johannesburg treason trial and a one-day strike in the locations of the Reef; portraits of such diverse figures as Harry Oppenheimer, the magnate-politician, and Christopher Gell, the influential liberal who spent his days in an iron lung; impressions of the Parliament, of the Zululand reserve, of life in the mines and the open veldt.

Jan Morris visited all four provinces and talked to an immense number of people of all persuasions and all walks of life, and she devotes a chapter to the individualities of the Afrikaner character, as it then struck an impartial and not unsympathetic observer.

South African Winter (1958) - in the brilliance of its writing, the wit, intelligence and sharpness of its observation - is a work of enduring fascination.

'We are lucky to have Jan Morris, and her gift of transporting us to other realms'. Salley Vickers

Movement is the "raison d'etre" of New York. In The Great Port, Jan Morris explores the waterfronts and thoroughfares of 1950's Manhattan just as she navigated the canals of Venice; she knows every bridge, every tunnel, every island of the whole archipelago. She depicts the city as a place of constant motion, which has been translated into a culture of inveterate restlessness. First published in 1957, The Great Port is a vivid and entertaining portrait of a splendid old seaport whose purposes have gone awry.

When The Great Port appeared in New York, the "Wall Street Journal" called it 'unique', the "New York Times" said it discovered more than most New Yorkers had ever learnt, and the" Publisher's Weekly" thought it perhaps the best book on New York since the classic work of E. B. White.

Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire by Jan Morris - one of the world's pre-eminent travel writers - depicts the city of Hong Kong in 1988, tragically suspended between a colonial past and the uncertainties of China's future. First published in 1988, Hong Kong is a portrait of the British Empire's last, most anachronistic outpost, as the countdown to the handover gathers momentum. Written with her trademark elegance and panache, Morris depicts a city tragically suspended between a colonial past and the uncertainties of China's future. 'It is difficult to think of anyone who could recount this tale with such authority, elegance and sensitivity as Jan Morris ... Here, she portrays what has always been Britain's most adjective-defying colony ... Morris so clearly likes the place, but she is not sentimental, nor is she blind to Hong Kong's flaws; she is aware of rootlessness in the teeming energy.' TLS 'The book captures the contradictions and mad terror of Hong Kong better than could a novel - it's a dramatic documentary ... ' Evening Standard 'The definitive study.' Washington Post

'We are lucky to have Jan Morris, and her gift of transporting us to other realms.' Salley Vickers

The Hashemites are the oldest, proudest, most romantic and most tragic family of Greater Arabia. When the Arabs revolted against their Ottoman overlords, Hashemite fortunes became inseparably linked with those of Britain. The Hashemite Kings traces the strange history of this relationship, from its beginnings in the conspiracy and desert warfare, through the great days of the Hashemite Kingdoms to the assassinations and horrors of Baghdad in 1958. This dramatic story is shaped by the conflicting forces and ideas that govern the politics and passions of the Middle East. Colourful figures move through it - T. E. Lawrence, Ibn Suad, Glubb Pasha, Nasser - but the narrative is dominated by the Hashemite Kings themselves and told with Jan Morris's customary verve, panache and intelligence.

'None of Venice's innumerable chroniclers have portrayed the Serenissima's character with quite such a combination of the scholarly, the informal and the intimate...Over the years thousands of readers, starting this book, have been relieved to encounter its famously undemanding approach to the city - 'Generally the first thing to do in Venice is to sit down and have some coffee': but by the time they get to the end of it, all the same, they will have learnt virtually everything that an educated stranger needs to know about the place, its art and its history, besides being subtly entertained throughout.' From Jan Morris's introduction

Here's a book for lovers of all things Italian. This city on the Adriatic has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and changeability. After visiting Trieste for more than half a century, she has come to see it as a touchstone for her interests and preoccupations: cities, seas, empires. It has even come to reflect her own life in its loves, disillusionments, and memories. Her meditation on the place is characteristically layered with history and sprinkled with stories of famous visitors from James Joyce to Sigmund Freud. A lyrical travelogue, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is also superb cultural history and the culmination of a singular career-"an elegant and bittersweet farewell" (Boston Globe).

Europe has been widely acclaimed as among the finest achievements of 'one of our greatest living writers' (The Times). A personal appreciation, fuelled by five decades of journeying, this is Jan Morris at her best - at once magisterial and particular, whimsical and profound. It is a matchless portrait of a continent.

'Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.' Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, The Cuban Revolution and so much more. Now, in Allegorizings, published posthumously as was her wish, Morris looks back over some of the key moments of her life, and sees a multitude of meanings. From her final travels to the USA and across Europe to late journeys on her beloved trains and ships, from the deaths of her old friends Hilary and Tenzig to the enduring relationships in her own life, from reflections on identity and nations to the importance of good marmalade, it bears testimony to her uniquely kind and inquisitive take on the world.

In 1912, a young D.H. Lawrence left England for the first time and travelled to northern Italy. He spent nearly a year on the shores of Lake Garda, lodged in elegantly decaying houses set amid lemon groves and surrounded by the fading life of traditional Italy. This is a travel book unlike any other, where landscapes and people are backdrops to Lawrence's deeper wanderings - into philosophy, opinion, life, nature, religion and the fate of man. With sensuous descriptions of late harvests, darkening days and fragile ancient traditions, Twilight in Italy is suffused with nostalgia and premonition. For, looming over the idyll of rural Italy hover dark spectres: the arrival of the industrial age and the brewing storm of World War I, upheavals that would change the face of Europe forever.

Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat traces the momentous decline and fall of the greatest of empires - from Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. With characteristic balance, this masterpiece of narrative history describes the long retreat and final dissolution of the British Empire. The Pax Britannica Trilogy includes Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress and Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Jan Morris is also world-renowned for her collection of travel writing and reportage, spanning over five decades and including such titles as Venice, Coronation Everest, Hong Kong, Spain, A Writer's World and most recently, Contact! 'The British Empire is fortunate in having found in Morris a chronicler and memorialist who can do it justice. . . Morris writes with inspired gusto, firmly rooted in erudition, which carries the book into the realms of literature.' Sunday Telegraph 'One of our finest writers on Empire - alive to its glory, yet with a beady eye for the corruptions and failures which were at its heart, along with the dreams.' Observer

For just a few years, the fifteenth-century rebel leader Owain Glyndwr seized control of Wales from its English overlords. Yet dreams of Welsh independence have never been extinguished ... Half-Welsh, half-English, Jan Morris has travelled to every corner of the earth, yet it is 'the damp, demanding and obsessively interesting country' of Wales which remains her first love. This sweeping celebration tells the story from prehistoric times and shows how a people never overrun by any of the heathen successors to the Romans came to see itself as the inheritor of Roman urbanity, early Christian devotion and the glories of a lost Celtic civilization. Long established as a classic, the book has now been substantially revised as the birth of a new Welsh Assembly again re-ignites Owain's hopes. Passionate, witty, stirring, full of rich historical detail as well as vivid vignettes of life today, this is the definitive evocation of every aspect of Welshness.

'Years and years ago, observing that nobody in the history of man had ever seen and described the entire urban world, I resolved to do it myself ...'

It was thirty years later, standing in the great square in Beijing, that Jan Morris realized that she had achieved her extraordinary ambition. Among the Cities (1985) is a magnificent collection which presents her personal selection of travel pieces, with definitive evocations of places as different as Alexandria and Bath, Warsaw and Wyoming.

Whether she is describing Beirut before the lights went out, the cloying charms of Vienna ('no place for a Welsh republican'), the dream-world of Kashmir or the 'impending euphoria of Rio de Janeiro, Jan Morris never leaves us in doubt that she is one of the greatest travel writers - and one of the greatest prose writers - of our time.

'I don't think there is a writer alive who has Jan Morris's serenity or strength.' Paul Theroux

'She can even impart a place's smell.' "Observer"

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Humorous tales of travel and misadventure. Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, they can give birth to our most found travel lessons, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories. These 31 globegirdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travellers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers. Includes stories by Wickam Boyle, Tim Cahill, Joshua Clark, Sean Condon, Chistopher R.Cox, David Downie, Holly Erikson, Bill Fink, Don George, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Jeff Grenwald, Pico Iyer, Amanda Jones, Kathie Kertesz, Doug Lansky, Alexander Ludwick, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jan Morris, Brooke Neill, Rolf Potts, Laura Resau, Michelle Richmond, Alana Semuels, Deborah Steg, Judy Tierney, Edwin Tucker, Jeff Vize, Danny Wallace, Kelly Watton, Simon Wichester, Michelle Witton About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

In 1945, New York City stood at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power. Never again would the city possess the unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and confidence which characterized it in this moment of triumph. In Manhattan '45, acclaimed travel writer and historian Jan Morris evokes the city in all its romantic grandeur. From its beguilingly idiosyncratic architectural style to its unmistakable slang, post-War New York springs to life through Morris's brisk, affectionate prose. Morris visits Wall Street, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. She rides the trollies, the El, the Hudson River ferries, and the Twentieth Century Limited. She dines at Schrafft's and Le Pavillon, drinks ale at McSorley's Saloon, sips Manhattans at the Manhattan Club, and spots celebrities at El Morocco. She meets Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Moses, Leo Durocher, I. B. Singer, and Dizzy Gillespie. And she tours the tenements of Hell's Kitchen and the Gashouse district, as well as the Foundling Hospital where the crushing realities of poverty belie the unchallenged exuberance of the age. Taking into account both Social Register and slum, Manhattan '45 celebrates New York's Golden Age as a place where, for one unrepeatable moment in history, anything seemed possible.

Necrophilia is not one of my failings, but I do like graveyards and memorial stones and such... Following the publication In My Mind's Eye, her acclaimed first volume of diaries, a Radio 4 Book of the Week in 2018, Jan Morris continued to write her daily musings. From her home in the North West of Wales, the author of classics such as Venice and Trieste cast her eye over modern life in all its stupidity and glory. From her daily thousand paces to the ongoing troubles of Brexit, from her enduring love for America to the wonders of the natural world, and from the vagaries and ailments of old age to the beauty of youth, she once again displays her determined belief in embracing life and creativity - all kindness and marmalade.