Jan Morris

'The best book about Venice ever written' (Sunday Times) - Jan Morris' bestselling travel writing classic is an essential guide to this magical city, newly introduced by Tracy Chevalier. Whether the dappled secrets of the city's canals, churches, calles and campos, to the romantic tales behind its revered landmarks, paintings, scultpures and mosaics - the myths and history of the Venetian people or the legendary mystery of the the lagoon itself -Jan Morris explores this dream-like city in impressionistic prose you will never forget. Whether visiting in person or in the mind, as an armchair traveller or tourist, this is both not only 'the essential introduction' to Venice but a true 'work of literature in its own right' (Observer). 'One of the best travel books I have ever read. It made me want to go to Venice and when I went it made being there even better.' Michael Palin*Sara Wheeler's new biography of Jan Morris, Jan Morris: A Life, will be published in April by Faber*

The Battleship Yamato, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was the most powerful warship of World War II and represented the climax, as it were, of the Japanese warrior traditions of the samurai – the ideals of honour, discipline and self-sacrifice that had immemorially ennobled the Japanese national consciousness. Stoically poised for battle in the spring of 1945 – when even Japan’s last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short – Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito.Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself – from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa – but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendour and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art, Battleship Yamato is a work of grand ironic elegy."The short, illustrated book Morris has written about the Yamato is what she calls ''a reverie'' on the varied emotions that war summons up…I think it''s safe to say that Morris has also written a reverie on accepting the inevitability of death… This book itself signals yet another end: Certainly, it will be one of the very last books written about World War II by an author who saw active service in that war. That sobering fact only adds to the elegiac resonance of this magnificent little book." ? Maureen Corrigan, NPR''s Fresh Air.Published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the sinking of Yamato (7 April 2025).