Still, Morris maintains her ironist’s accreditations. An acute, idiosyncratic collection, full of what the author, at home at last, always liked best: fizz.

The first thing to be said about Jan Morris is that she has emerged from her experiences as a first-class writer. This was not something one could say with any great conviction about her previous persona, James Morris. Although there are good passages in "The World of Venice," for instance, there are also some shockingly bad ones; possibly the affectation and pretentiousness, the occasional descents into Lawrence Durrell whimsy, were products of the insecurity he felt in his earlier role. Possibly we writers should all undergo the occasional sex change as a means of keeping us on our toes and generally toning us up. At all events, she now writes in a fine, robust, self-confident style. If one can, without offense, attribute sexual characteristics to a prose style, I should say the new Morris was noticeably the more masculine, and it comes as something of a shock, when she is describing a journey across Singapore harbor, to read: "Spray got in our eyes, oil got on our skirts."