#janmorris

[barnabyjamesedwards]

Barnaby Edwards - Jan Morris

(Conté stick on toned card, 2023)

Today’s LGBTQ+ hero is historian, author and travel writer Jan Morris (1926-2020). She began transitioning in 1964 and wrote one of the great trans autobiographies, Conundrum (1972). Oh, and she was also part of the famous 1953 Everest expedition.

For more of Barnaby's drawings and paintings of LGBTQ+ heroes, click here.

[quotaholic]

At one time of its life, when it is young, yellow and friendly, the dandelion sings a bold bass to the sweet contraltos and trebles of the cowslips and primroses. Later, it veils itself in mystery, and the powder puffs of its virility are silently scattered across fields and gardens everywhere.

Jan Morris 

[brandmatt]

Hav Jan Morris

[missfliss88]

Seen While Reading:

“In Darwin you may meet the Australian male at his most confident, on the edge of the great Outback. He may be of any age, this dinkum Aussie. He may be a humdrum bank clerk, or a prospector driven wildly in from his shack in the wilderness to squander his money on drink and loose living. Whoever he is, he is magnificent to meet: as free a spirit as you can find in the world today, shackled by no inhibition of class or disadvantage, with little sense of thrift and still less of decorum, no agonising reserve, no contempt, no meanness. It is as though he has been relieved of the burden of the centuries, strengthened and cleansed by the southern sun, and allowed to begin history all over again.”

from - Contact by Jan Morris

[missfliss88]

Seen While Reading:

“I watched an elderly man with sparse gingery hair strolling hands in pockets towards a pub on an Edinburgh corner, followed forty or fifty yards behind by his extremely aged collie dog. Sometimes the man looked round with an encouraging smile, and the dog smiled gamely back, and so they progressed in perfect rapport, like figures in a Burns poem, until the pair of them disappeared together into the malty shadows of the pub.”

from - Contact by Jan Morris.

[lgbt-history-archive]

Happy Birthday, Jan Morris! Picture: Jan Morris (b. October 2, 1926), North Wales, c. 2005. Photo by Eamonn McCabe, c/o @guardian. "I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life." So begins Jan Morris's "Conundrum," the Welsh writer's 1974 memoir detailing her journey as a trans woman and an early trans activist. As a young adult, Morris served in World War II and wrote for The Times, where she gained notoriety for accompanying Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the British Mount Everest Expedition, reporting the success of the journey via coded message. In 1949, Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, and the couple eventually had five children. In 1972, Morris sought gender affirming surgery in Morocco because British doctors would not perform the procedure while Morris and Tuckniss were married. While the couple eventually divorced, they never separated and, in May 2008, they entered a civil union. "I have lived with the same person for fifty-eight years," Morris told reporters. "We were married when I was young...and then this sex-change, so-called, happened, so we naturally had to divorce...but we always lived together, anyway. So, I wanted to round this thing off nicely." Morris, who turns ninety today, is considered one of the greatest British writers of the twentieth century. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #QueerHistoryMatters #HavePrideInHistory #TransIsBeautiful #JanMorris