an Morris: the letters that reveal her pre-transition torment (Times article)

[RoyalCorgi]

The Times has an excerpt from a new (clearly sympathetic) biography of Jan Morris. Thought people might find it interesting, given what's emerged about Morris in the past few years.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/c1b0e53e-3dd4-4cf8-8b57-10329af246ba?shareToken=7430144c8fcd57420484d4ba6281f201

Edited to say: the J is missing from the subject heading, but it's not allowing me to correct it.

"Every time I said ‘Daddy’, Jan refused to answer.”

Shows what a self-absorbed nightmare he was. Awful man.

And for the author of the piece (a woman?), other women are merely parentheses

For five years either side of turning 40 Morris effectively led a double life. It took a toll, psychologically; of course it did. (One can only try to imagine what it was like for Elizabeth.)

Yeh, typical self absorbed AGP who thought the world world revolved around him. I don't get why so many older men seem to fawn over him so much.

At least the surgeon was clear minded:

French gynaecologist Georges Burou led the field in male-to-female operations in his Clinique du Parc in Casablanca on the Moroccan coast. He did not footle around with psychiatric assessment. “I don’t change men into women,” he told Time magazine. “I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient’s mind.”

Does go to show how these efforts to take over women’s spaces have gone on for decades.

Everything I've read about Morris shows him to be a self-absorbed and self-centred man. My sympathy is reserved for his wife and children.

Agreed; I'd be far more interested in a (joint?) autobiography of them than in yet more lionising of him.

@RoyalCorgi you can "report" your post and ask MN to fix the title if you click "other" and ask them to do so in the text box

I won't bother reading this. Morris' daughter (I think) has written the only book about their parent that anyone needs to read.

Oh, I didn't realise there was already a book from the point of view of his family (or one member, at least). I'll have a look for that, thank you.

I have no idea why this man is featured so regularly and sympathetically in the Times

He seems to have made a powerful and sympathetic impression on a lot of male journalists of a certain class and age.

And that’s how we know he’s not a woman!

Attention-seeking misogynist men are so boring.

Morris worked for the Times but obviously a long time ago as he was the reporter who broke the news of Hillary & Sherpa Tenzing Norgay climbing Everest in 1953.

There's an article written by, or interview with his daughter floating around somewhere that says far more about the man than anything else I've ever seen. Here’s a thread discussing it-

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4695399-sunday-times-article-by-jan-morriss-daughter

I was disappointed to see the Times are not allowing comments under this article. I was looking forwards to readers’ robust take down.