1. Jan Morris published under her birth name, James, until 1972, when she had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female.
12 Facts About Jan Morris
1. 2.
Jan Morris went on to be educated at Lancing College, returning to Christ Church, Oxford, as an undergraduate, taking a second-class honours BA in 1951, and editing the Cherwell magazine.
3.
Jan Morris reported on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.
4.
In 1949, Jan Morris married Elizabeth, daughter of Ceylon tea planter Austen Cecil Tuckniss; they had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys.
5.
Jan Morris began transitioning to life as a woman in 1964, one of the first high-profile people to do so.
6.
Jan Morris died on 20 November 2020 at Ysbyty Bryn Beryl in Pwllheli in North Wales, at the age of 94, survived by Elizabeth and their four children.
7.
Jan Morris was elected to the Gorsedd Cymru in 1992, and received the Glyndwr Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales in 1996.
8.
Jan Morris won the 2018 Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing Award.
9.
Jan Morris's 1974 best-selling memoir Conundrum documented her transition and was compared to that of transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen.
10.
Jan Morris wrote many essays on travel and her life, and published a collection of her diary entries as In My Mind's Eye in 2019.
11.
In 1995, Jan Morris completed a biography of First Sea Lord John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, entitled Fisher's Face.
12.
Jan Morris began researching the life of the Admiral in the 1950s, describing the several-decades-long project as a "jeu d'amour".