There are places that have meant more to me than Trieste. Wales is where my heart is. A lost England made me. I have had more delicious pleasures in Venice. Manhattan excites me more than Trieste ever could, and so does Sydney. But here more than anywhere I remember lost times, lost chances, lost friends, with the sweet tristesse that is onomatopoeic to the place. What became of that innocent young man I escorted to the brothel on page 138? Dead and gone, and all his horses too, from an English countryside that is no more. The friend who came with me to the schooner on page 83? Still sailing his yacht about the seas, loaded with rank and honour now, but no longer the lithe young bravo who clambered on board with the prosecco that evening. Otto, my natural Triestine, was stabbed to death in Arabia long ago. The woman who slept one dreadful night at the Risiera has gone to her peaceful rest at last. And the stranger I bumped into that day at the Savoia Excelsior? What swing doors is he passing through today, with what arthritic difficulty, and what tender lies is he telling now that he is old and grey?
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: but now and then you may find me in a boat below the walls of Miramar, watching the nightingales swarm.
Trefan Morys, 2001
Something I owe to the soil that grew–
More to the life that Fed—
But most to Allah Who gave me two
Separate sides to my head
===============
Rudyard Kipling
BOOKS BY JAN MORRIS
Coast to Coast 1956
Sultan in Oman 1957
The Market of Seleukia 1957
Coronation Everest 1958
South African Winter 1958
The Hashemite Kings 1959
Venice 1960
The Upstairs Donkey (for children) 1961
Cities (essays) 1963
The World Bank (for the World Bank) 1963
The Outriders (political statement) 1963
The Presence of Spain 1964
Oxford 1965
The Pax Britannica Trilogy 1968—1978
The Great Port (for the Port of New York Authority) 1969
Places (essays) 1972
Conundrum 1974
Travels (essays) 1976
The Oxford Book of Oxford (ed.) 1978
Destinations (essays) 1980
The Venetian Empire 1980
A Venetian Bestiary 1982
The Spectacle of Empire 1982
Wales, The First Place (with Paul Wakefield) 1982
Stones of Empire (with Simon Winchester) 1983
The Matter of Wales 1984
Journeys (essays) 1984
Among the Cities (essays) 1985
Last Letters from Hav (novel) 1985
Scotland, The Place of Visions (with Paul Wakefield) 1986
Manhattan ‘45 1987
Hong Kong 1988
Pleasures of a Tangled Life 1989
Ireland, Your Only Place (with Paul Wakefield) 1990
Sydney 1992
O Canada! (essays) 1992
Locations (essays) 1992
Travels with Virginia Woolf (W.) 1993
A Machynlleth Triad (with Twm Morys) 1994
Fisher’s Face 1995
Fifty Years of Europe 1997
Lincoln 1999
Our First Leader (Welshfantasy) 2000
Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere 2001
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Welsh writer Jan Morris, who is seventy-five this year, has written some forty books and says that this is the last. They have included several historical works about the rise and decline of the British Empire, six collections of travel essays, major studies of Europe, Wales, Spain, Venice, Oxford, Hong Kong and Manhattan, two capricious biographies, two autobiographical works and a couple of short novels. She is an honorary D. Litt of the University of Wales, a member of the Gorsedd of Bards of the Welsh National Eisteddfod, an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British architects, a Fellow of the Royal Literary Society and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She lives in the top left-hand corner of Wales.