Ireland Your Only Place

by Jan Morris, Paul Wakefield

A series of heartfelt essays and full-color photographs comprise a striking treasury of Ireland's rolling farmland, rocky sea cliffs, and majestic mountains, along with narrative text that discusses everything from Ireland's ancient roots, religious convictions, and prized authors to the country's obvious and more subtle changes with modern times. Reflects upon Ireland old and new, with a focus on the delicate task of preserving Ireland's rich and important heritage. There are haunting, moody images as well as colorful vistas and remote corners of Ireland, including photographs of the Kerry Coast; Garnish Bay in County Cork; Connemara in County Galway; Ballyness Bay in County Donegal; Inisheer, the Aran Islands; and many more locations.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Jan Morris was a British historian, author and travel writer. Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but is Welsh by heritage and adoption. Before 1970 Morris published under her assigned birth name, "James ", and is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City, and also wrote about Wales, Spanish history, and culture.

In 1949 Jan Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter. Morris and Tuckniss had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy. As Morris documented in her memoir Conundrum, she began taking oestrogens to feminise her body in 1964. In 1972, she had sex reassignment surgery in Morocco. Sex reassignment surgeon Georges Burou did the surgery, since doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and Tuckniss divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time. They divorced later, but remained together and later got a civil union. On May, 14th, 2008, Morris and Tuckniss remarried each other. Morris lived mostly in Wales, where her parents were from.

Reviews

[Suz]

The text is interesting in parts, rambling in others. The pictures are mostly dark, and don't do justice to the beauty of the country.