Faber to publish Jan Morris’s first ever book of Diaries

Faber and Faber are delighted to announce the acquisition of Jan Morris’s In My Mind’s Eye for hardback publication in September 2018.

Jan Morris, who celebrated her ninetieth birthday last year and was this week awarded the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing, is the author of many classic books including Venice, Conundrum, The Pax Britannica Trilogy and Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.

A former soldier, who served in the Second World War, her many extraordinary achievements as a journalist, when still known as James Morris, include scooping the world in reporting the conquest of Everest by Hillary and Tensing in time for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, covering the Eichmann Trial in 1961, and writing on America Cities for Rolling Stone in the 1970s.

Editorial Director Angus Cargill, who bought UK & Commonwealth rights from Caroline Dawnay and Sophie Scard at United Agents, described the book as, ‘a perfect treat – the thoughts, over the course of last year, of one the greatest writers of the last sixty years. From cars to cats, travel to home, music to writing, Brexit to America, marmalade to lunch, kindness to ageing, it is a book marked by her unique turn of phrase and characteristically intimate voice, at once funny, perceptive, wise, touching, wicked, scabrous, and kind!’

Caroline Dawnay said, ‘fiercely tender thoughts, strongly mild thoughts, oxymoronically Jan Morris ranges widely from the confines of her north Wales home and delights and surprises us every day afresh’.  Sophie Scard, co-agent, said, ‘Jan Morris is a writer, and a person, like no other. To read her is a privilege and a joy, never more so than in these wise, funny reflections’. And Robert Weil of  W.W. Norton said, ‘a splendid and, quite often, hilarious diary [containing] the profound wisdom and a personal philosophy that always enriches Morris’s writing’.