All language subtitles for BBC Artsnight Michael Palin Meets Jan Morris 2016

"For years, I felt myself an exile
from normality,

"and now I feel myself
one of those exiles from time.

"The past is a foreign country,

"but so is old age.

"And as you enter it, you feel
you're treading unknown territory,

"leaving your own land behind."

These are the words of one of the
most extraordinary writers of the

20th century who, this year,
turns 90 years old.

Jan Morris has written some
of my favourite books

of the last five decades.

Her volume on Venice inspired me
to write and to travel

and, even these days,
when I go to a new destination,

I often pick up one of her books

just to really whet
my appetite for the road.

Her life reads like
a Boys' Own adventure.

After serving as a World War II
intelligence officer,

Morris became one of the most
celebrated journalists of the 1950s,

and witnessed many of the events
that defined the century.

The Cuban Revolution, the
Eichmann Trial, and the Suez Crisis.

She was part of the team that
climbed Everest for the first time

in 1953 and, in the years since,
she's become an acclaimed author,

described by Alistair Cooke as
the Flaubert of the jet-set age.

But if you look at the spines
of those early books,

or the by-lines
on those newspaper reports,

you won't see the name Jan Morris.

You'll see the name James.

And that's because in 1972,

Jan Morris became one of the first
public figures in this country to

undergo gender reassignment.

The publication of her account
of the transition made her

one of the most
controversial writers of the day.

"Jan Morris is still, to me, a man,
who has eaten a great many pills."

How can I answer that?
What do you expect me to say?

And now, as Jan Morris
enters her tenth decade,

I've travelled north to a house
in a far-flung corner of Wales

to pay homage to a remarkable woman
and a remarkable life.

Having made a name for herself
as a world traveller,

Jan's home is here in Llanystumdwy,
north-west Wales,

snuggled away beyond Snowdonia.

I've travelled a long way
to get here today.

Actually, I feel a bit nervous
about just banging on the door,

but I have met Jan before,
once or twice,

at sort of official functions,
and actually she did contribute,

rather generously, an introduction
to the American version of my book,

Around The World In 80 Days,

but this is still going to be
basically a fan-and-hero situation,

so a bit of pressure.

A-ha! Hello.
I know who you are.

Well, I know who you are!
This is wonderful to see you!

Yes, you too. Thank you very,
very much for...

For what? We haven't done anything
yet. Well, for letting me come here.

Oh, yes. Right. Yeah. Yes, you know.

And being here! And thank you
for coming. ..being here,

and not in some far distant part
of the world.

Glad to have caught you in,
as they say.

Ah, I'm usually in now. Not like
you! Not travelling as much?

No. I've got tired of taking
my shoes off at airports...

Oh, yes. ..and all that stuff.
Yes. So what about you?

I love going places still, I love
the new. You're not as old as I am.

Well... I've been doing it
that much longer.

Wait. OK!

It's important to have a place
to come back to, isn't it?

Yes, it is. I've always liked
to have one foot here.

Because you've got to have that base
from which you can then go...

Yes, you've got to have one foot
somewhere, I think. Yes. Yep.

'Though she's a homebird,

'her house is filled with mementos
from a life of travelling.'

I like this teapot very much.

Ah. Is that Japanese? Chinese.

'And, of course,
there's the thousands of books,

'many of them her own.'

When you're here now, I mean,

what do you like to do
on a sort of ideal day?

Well, my ideal day is writing
a book. Ah. Without question.

You are still writing, then?
Yes.

And I read, of course.

People come, you know. Visitors
come, make television films.

Do they? No.
We thought we were the only ones!

'And there's Elizabeth,
her partner of almost 70 years,

'and mother to their four children.'

We started but we couldn't find you,
my love.

I was out there!

Do you want a cup? No, thank you.
Then I'll pour it.

Jan's adventures around the world
began when she landed her dream job

as a foreign correspondent
for The Times.

How old were you then? 20-something?
I don't know. Yeah.

Were you very ambitious
as a journalist?

Oh, I was, terribly. Yes, yes.

In 1953, the 26-year-old James
got a major career break.

"The bearer of this letter,
Mr James Humphrey Morris,

"is attached to the British Mount
Everest expedition and an accredited

"correspondent of The Times."

There you are, there.
There, there, yes.

SHE CHUCKLES

Were you full of trepidation?
What did you feel at the time?

Quite a weight on your shoulders,
the only journalist.

Oh, I was badly ambitious, you know.

Yes, so... I was delighted. So there
was no crisis of confidence there.

No, no. You were the right person
in the right place, yes.

"From the special correspondent."

The Times was anonymous
in those days, of course.

Yes, but, I mean,
an enormous amount of

long, complex dispatches.

They were big stuff, weren't they?
Yeah, yeah.

And every single aspect
of the journey,

from the use of open circuit oxygen,
and then little-known

passes explored and all that.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

In this riveting documentary
of the expedition,

we get a first-hand glimpse of the
challenge Morris faced as part of

the first successful team
to climb Everest.

This party includes the special
correspondent of The Times.

This is the first time
he has ever been up a mountain.

He will tell you
how all this struck him.

Yes, struck him is the right phrase.

The whole thing, you see,
is just like a squashed meringue,

only, of course, rather bigger,
and men are just insects in it,

very small insects lost in the cream
and the crumble.

A very dangerous meringue, too,
full of crevasses.

CRASH

Look at that. That's rather nice.

Yes. "It's a boy."

During their weather broadcast,
from the Everest expedition,

"a message for Mr James Morris
telling him that his wife gave birth

"to a son last night."
That's wonderful, isn't it? Yes.

There was more joy to come.

On the 29th of May,
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

became the first to successfully
summit Mount Everest,

all 29,000 feet.

How high did you
actually reach yourself?

It gets higher every year.

Really? Well, Everest does,
we know that.

Oh, well, it does do, yes! Yeah.

Well, what is your current...?
HE LAUGHS

Sort of 23,000. 23,000 feet?

It fell to Jan to make
the hazardous descent

to break the story
to the rest of the world.

It was getting dark,

and we had to go down through
the ice fall,

which is still the most dangerous
part of Everest, really.

We stumbled down through the night.

I was hopeless, I lost everything,
I tripped over,

I got tangled up in ropes
and things.

Did you ever fear that you might not
get the story out,

or someone else would pick it up?
Yes, of course, yes. Oh, absolutely.

So you were driven
by a sort of slight panic. Yes.

Oh, certainly, yes. All the same,
there were moments on the journey

down which really
was rather exciting,

though I say it myself,
it really was.

As it got dark,
there was a moment when I said,

"Well, to hell with this,
I can't do this."

I said, "You go on,
I'm going to stay here."

In which case, I would certainly
have died, as a matter of fact.

And all he said was,
"Don't be ridiculous." Yes.

Really?! So you were on the verge of
really giving up, almost, were you?

Yes, I...I was, really. You must
have been exhausted, overwhelmed.

But I had a tug on the rope
and I went on.

I discovered
that quite near Everest,

there was an Indian army radio post,

but I knew that if I allowed them
to know what the message meant,

either we'd climbed Everest or
we'd failed to climb Everest... Yes.

..it would get around the world
in no time... Leak out before...

..and my scoop would be lost. Yeah.

And so the message
that I did send was that.

"Snow conditions bad stop advanced
base abandoned yesterday stop

"awaiting improvements stop
all well."

Oh, this is your code, meaning:

Everest climbed, May 29,
by Hillary and Tenzing.

And did you...you devised
the code?

Yes. Very satisfying,
very satisfying.

Yes. Everest conquered, in fact.
Yeah.

The news reached London on
Queen Elizabeth's Coronation Day,

compounding the sense
of national euphoria.

Before the age of space travel,

Everest was the Earth's final
frontier of human endeavour.

As the only remaining participant
in the expedition,

Jan has a uniquely personal record
of the feat -

a book that she brought
to Everest and back.

This was a history of
the various attempts on Everest.

The story of Everest, yes.
Right, yeah.

And they all signed it, you see.
Oh, yes.

Is it all the expeditions?
That's right, Tenzing.

"James Morris of The Times,
who owns the book." Yes.

20 years later, we had a reunion.

"Jan Morris, who still owns the
book." Who still owns the book!

THEY LAUGH

Yes, afterwards, when everybody
had died except me, in actual fact.

Yes, well...
We still had a sort of reunion.

This was attended chiefly by widows.

Right, OK. Yeah. It was the 60th
anniversary. 60th anniversary.

And here we are: "Jan Morris,
who still owns the book."

The next time, it'll be their sort
of great-grandchildren

and Jan Morris, who's still,
still writing in the book!

Everest opened all sorts of doors
for me, and one of the big doors

it opened was that I got
a fellowship in America.

And I'm sure I wouldn't have got
that if I hadn't been on Everest,

which made me well-known. It's hard
to keep up with you, really...

Yes. ..because you were racing
through life then.

You also were a presenter
for BBC programmes like Panorama.

You were one of their reporters.

Yes, odd things I did for them.
Yeah.

And I went to Hiroshima to see what
that was like after the bombing.

13 years ago, on just such
a morning as this,

at just about this time
in the morning,

there occurred the first atomic
bombing raid in the history of war

and this bridge behind me
in Hiroshima was its target.

One gaunt ruin, only one,

is deliberately left standing
as a memorial to that moment.

In 1961, as one of the most eminent
journalists in the world,

Jan was sent to Jerusalem to cover
the trial of Adolf Eichmann,

the man responsible for Hitler's
extermination camps.

It was broadcast around the world.

"There he sits, between his
policeman, unchanging, impassive,

"characterless but unforgettable.

"He never looks afraid,
he never looks despairing,

"he never gives the impression
that he may throw himself screaming

"against the glass walls of his cage
or burst into tears

"or even pluck our hearts

"with the agonising old dilemmas
of patriotism and loyalty."

You met some...pretty
extraordinary people.

I mean...

great names like Kim Philby,
Eisenhower, Che Guevara.

I mean, what were your impressions
of these people?

Were you starstruck?

No, I wasn't really,
I can't say I was.

THEY LAUGH

Che Guevara, let's...

Che was a different matter
because he wasn't a star then.

Oh. It was soon
after the revolution.

Jan was dispatched to Cuba to cover
the aftermath of the Communist

uprising in the late 1950s.

She found herself face-to-face
with the leader of the rebels.

And he was, I think, the head
of a bank, the local bank. Yes.

The Bank of Cuba. Oh, really?
And I interviewed him there.

Yeah. And it was only later

that I came to know
that he was such a figure.

Young people used to...
Do you remember?

They carried bags with Che Guevara
on them. Oh, yes.

And I used to say, "Do you know,
I've met Che Guevara",

and they couldn't believe it!

But he was a bank manager.
Yes, quite!

Bad for his image.
Yes, bad for his image!

Through the places she travelled to
and the people she met,

Jan developed her own distinctive
outlook on the world.

She brought these insights not just
to far-flung corners of the globe,

but also much closer to home.

Why Ickham? Well, why not?

It's a good place.

We dedicate this little film,

with affection but not, I hope,
with slush,

to all the inhabitants
of the village,

young and old, nice and nasty.

And you also got to do
some fairly wacky things.

I've seen a little programme
you did on a village in Kent.

Oh, yeah, I remember. You
interviewed the local people... Yes.

..about their, you know, beliefs
and their morals and all that.

That's right. It was rather bizarre.

It was rather revolutionary,
as a matter of fact. Yes!

It was quite a small village
called Ickham,

and we decided we'd build a sort
of tower of ladders and things,

and we invited the entire population
of the village

to come to this place,

and we filmed them
at the foot of the tower,

and then we could divide them.
We'd take people who,

I don't know, had origins in France
and moved there,

and people who had origins in
Ireland, that sort of thing,

instead of statistics.

And at least one, like Mrs Holliday,
has never been to London.

I've never been to London
and I don't want to,

and I don't like Ickham either.

It's very...extremely inventive.
Yes!

A sort of mixture of
It's A Knockout and Panorama. Yes!

Vivian, can I ask a question?

Tell me, do you think there's
any point in trying to keep Britain

as a first-class power in the world?

Yes, I do.
I think that Britain has fought

for her place in the world,
and I think she should keep it

so enemies
don't take it away from her.

How would you feel if your daughter
married a black man?

I would feel very annoyed.

Why? I should say,
"You married a black man?"

"If you can't find an Englishman,

"a nice Englishman to marry,
stay single."

Jan's journalistic career
had taken her all over the world.

At the start of the 1960s,

she turned her attention
to writing books

about the cities she was visiting.

These volumes of discovery were soon
to eclipse her journalism,

and were later complimented
by acclaimed works of memoir,

history and fiction.

And what I like about your books,
particularly,

is that you tend to fall in love
with places,

you fall in love with cities
like New York or...

Yes, I do. ..Istanbul or Cairo.
..and I feel I possess them, too.

I feel I've grabbed them for myself,
awful cheek!

Well, you know, your most notorious
love affair and probably most

successful was with Venice.

Yes. I mean,
how did that come about?

I have a melancholic streak in me,
I like melancholy. Ah, yes. Yes.

And the first appeal of Venice to me
was a melancholy one.

And much of my book is,
as a matter of fact, melancholy.

At that time, of course,
it was a dead city, really.

It had been defeated in war,
everything was closed,

there was nothing much to do.

And it was half empty
and dispirited. Mm.

And I liked it, I enjoyed that.

I admired it, too.

They were very nice people,
the Venetians, you know,

even in sadness. Mm.

And that struck me greatly
and has stayed with me ever since.

I still think of Venice
as a place of melancholy,

when it is anything but now,
isn't it?

It's a place of constant joy.

Well, you seem to be rather
suspicious of constant joy.

Yes!

"It's very old, very grand
and bent-backed.

"Its towers survey the lagoon
in crotchety splendour,

"some leaning one way,
some another.

"There are glimpses of flags and
fretted rooftops, marble pillars,

"cavernous canals.

"And incessant bustles of boats pass
before the quays of the place.

"A great white liner
slips towards its port,

"a multitude of tottering palaces,
brooding and monstrous,

"press towards the waterfront
like so many invalid aristocrats

"jostling for fresh air.

"It's a nulled but gorgeous city,
and as the boat approaches the last

"church-crowned islands and
a jet fighter screams splendidly

"out of the sun,
so the whole scene seems to shimmer

"with pinkness, with age,

"with self-satisfaction,
with sadness, with delight.

"The navigator stows away his charts
and puts on a gay straw hat.

"For he has reached that paragon
among landfalls, Venice."

It's one of those difficult things
now that constantly comes up

between tourism and travellers
and all of that.

I mean, you have written
most beautifully and exquisitely

about places and cities
and all that.

Mm. Do you see yourself
as a travel writer or is that...?

No, I've never thought of myself...

I hate being thought a travel writer
or called a travel writer at all

because I don't write about
journeys, you know. I never have.

But do you think that travel writing
itself is rather prescriptive,

it's saying I'm just writing
about travel, whereas, in fact,

you're just writing about life
and people and feelings...

Yes, it's the word... ..wherever
they are in the world? Yes.

It's the phrase that I dislike,
of course - the travel writers.

It implies that you're writing
about movement and about travel.

And I never have been,
I'm not a great mover.

Perhaps the most well-known journey
Jan has made is a metaphorical one,

the transition from male to female.

Though she's often reluctant
to dwell too long on this topic,

she chronicled it with searing
honesty in her 1974 autobiography,

Conundrum.

Although all your books
are sort of about yourself,

autobiographical, in a way,

the one classic acknowledged
autobiography is Conundrum. Mm.

And, um...

..tell me the story behind Conundrum

and why you decided
to write the book?

Good lord. That's very hard to say.

The story behind it... Well...
..the story behind it is

untellable, it seems to me. Mm.

And I've never pretended
to understand it.

I've always said
that it was something

sort of spiritual and metaphysical
in the feelings I had,

that I had been born
into the wrong body.

That was it.
I still don't know what it meant,

why it happened to me,

but I felt it so powerfully that I
felt I had to do something about it.

And you felt,
because you're a writer,

that you should write an account,

your own view of it, because it's
very clearly written and expressed -

all your doubts,
all your feelings are in there.

Did you ever worry
about writing an account of it?

Well, I thought you were
either keeping something secret

which couldn't be kept
secret anyway, you know,

which was gradually seeping out
into odd newspapers and stuff,

I thought it was better to come out
into the open and say what I felt

about it all. Yeah.

On the book's release,
the public was shocked that such

a well-known figure
could undergo such a process.

Jan was attacked in television shows
of the day for revealing the truth.

Don't you think that it's
extraordinarily arrogant to assume

that merely by taking off your penis
and having your external genitalia

now similar to a woman,

isn't it an extraordinary assumption
that you really can say,

"I am now a woman"?

I haven't said that.

What I've said is,
I was a person who was born a male

who felt herself to be
of the feminine gender

and who has so adjusted the body

as to fit, as far as possible,
with my inner spirit.

You said, I think, at one point,
you know,

that during the transition period,
that it was 50% miracle

and 50%...um, a freak show.

Mm. What were you meaning there?

Was that just the way
people saw what you were doing?

Yes, yes, of course.

It was a sort of...
Well, it's different now, isn't it,

it's so common nowadays, but in
those days, it was sort of freakish,

such a thing to happen
all of a sudden, wasn't it?

Are you ever able sufficiently
to stand back and see yourself

and see a tiny element
of absurdity in it?

No, I think it's beautiful.

I can't think it's funny because
I think it's a truth that has been

revealed, and I think it's a magical
thing that's happened to me, and to

have such a happiness and fulfilment
given to one halfway through life

seems to be very unabsurd.

And did that make you feel bitter
at the time?

No, no, I didn't,
because nearly everybody I knew

was very kind about it, you know.
Yeah, yeah.

I mean nowadays people are talking
about transsexuals...

Now you can't get away from it!
THEY CHUCKLE

Well, they've made a film recently,
The Danish Girl.

Have you seen it? I haven't, no,

but the director said
he'd been greatly influenced by

Conundrum. Yes.

"I got out of bed rather shakily,
for the drug was beginning to work

"and I went to say goodbye to myself
in the mirror.

"We would never meet again.

"And I wanted to give
that other self a long,

"last look in the eye
and a wink for luck.

"As I did so, a street vendor
outside played a delicate arpeggio

"upon his flute,
a very merry, gentle sound,

"which he repeated over
and over again in sweet diminuendo

"down the street.

" 'Flights of angels',
I said to myself,

"and so staggered back to my bed
and oblivion."

That's me in Budapest. Yes, yes.

You're looking very bonny.
Yes, I was.

And Elizabeth, I mean, you've known
Elizabeth both as a man and a woman,

you know, in your case.
Yes, well.

And she was happy to be
with all that?

Yes, she just thought it was me.

She took it on board because
it was you, it was all you. Yes!

Quite. I didn't think it
was very important. Mm.

And she obviously felt...
Well, I'd done my duties anyway!

Yes, you'd had your children.

But she obviously felt you hadn't
changed as much as people might

think you'd changed. No.

I feel exactly the same.

Yes. Yeah. Was there ever a moment
when Elizabeth thought,

"Oh, well, you know,
this is not going to work"?

I wonder, I don't know.

She never said it to me. She's never
said it! No! In all those years!

She never actually talked
about that. Yes.

You've had such
an extraordinary life, Jan.

I mean, some of it seems
like a medieval morality play

or a myth or whatever.

I mean...
Myth more than morality.

Well, that's for you to tell!

How do you, how do you sum it up
in your own mind, if you like,

when you look back on your life?

Or do you? Yes, I do,
as a matter of fact,

because I've enjoyed this life
very much,

and I admire it as a matter of fact.

I think it's been a very good
and interesting life.

And I've made a whole of it
quite deliberately,

and I've done all the books to be,
all my books

to make one
big, long autobiography.

So the whole thing, my life
has been one whole self-centred

exercise in self-satisfaction.

At least that's honest.
It is, isn't it? That's wonderful.

So you have a sense of... Yes.
..this is what you wanted to do,

and you've... I do. ..mainly done it
or you're still doing it.

It happened beyond my control,
so to speak,

but I have tried to mould it
into one whole.

Nowhere has made its mark on Jan
like the Italian city of Trieste,

once part of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

which she first visited at the end
of World War II.

Her 2001 meditation on the city
is a masterpiece.

I think you said at the time,
and I wonder why,

that
Trieste And The Meaning Of Nowhere

was going to be your last book. Yes.
That was it. What made you...

decide it should be your last book?

Well, partly because I, forgive me,
but I think it's a very good book.

I think it's the best book I wrote.
I thoroughly agree.

And I don't believe that I could do
it as well again,

and so I thought it was really time
to stop doing it.

"As for me, when
my clock moves on for the last time,

"the angel having returned
to heaven,

"the angler having packed it in
for the night and gone to the pub,

"I shall happily haunt
the two places

"that have most happily haunted me.

"Most of the after time, I shall be
wandering with my beloved along the

"banks of the Dwyfor River in Wales,

"but now and then you may find me

"in a boat beneath
the walls of Miramare,

"watching the nightingales swarm."

Come, I'll show you
something interesting.

It's all interesting.

'Even as she approaches 90,

'Jan isn't fazed by thoughts
of the grave.

'In fact, she's more prepared
than most.'

Well, how about that.

"Here are two friends,
Jan and Elizabeth Morris."

Oh, that's beautiful.

Isn't that touching? Yes.

I've got a little island in
the river down here... Have you?

Oh, right. ..where my ashes,
I suppose,

and Elizabeth's, too,
are going to be scattered. Yeah.

And this will be on top of that.

Ah. But you've got to wait
till you both go, really.

On the whole, I think you should,
don't you?!

HE LAUGHS

You have meant so much
to each other.

Before I go, I have to ask Jan if
there's any one thing she's learned

from her incredible life.

So what's the secret
to having one life together?

Kindness. Kindness, in my opinion.

It's the secret to all life's
problems. Kindness? Yes. Mm.

To be kind. It's much easier
to be kind than to be not kind.

Yes. Why do people
find it so difficult?

I don't know.
For one thing, they think

love is more important
than kindness. Mm.

And love implies
all sorts of demands. Yes.

Kindness isn't demanding at all.

There we are. Yeah. There we are.

Kindness is inclusive
and love is exclusive. Yes.

And here endeth the first
and last lesson.

HE LAUGHS

..of the Book Of Jan!
Of the Book Of Jan!