Not the first by far
Had I been standing rather than reclining this could have rocked me back on my heels. I was reading my gazillionth book about Everest, this one by George Band, one of the original members of the '53 expedition that 'knocked the bastard off' as Edmund Hilary tactfully put it. The expedition had sold the story rights to the Times and they sent a young reporter by the name of James Morris to accompany the expedition, he deserves mention because not being a climber he still made it up to 20000 feet.
So what? you say. Well towards the end of the book is a 'what happened to them afterwards' heres an extract about James Morris,
James Morris was the 'anonymous' Special Correspondent of The Times attached to the expedition. ....... Although we never realised it in the 1950s, as he described in his book Conundrum, James increasingly felt he was a female imprisoned in a male body. After his children had reached maturity, he therefore took the brave and bold step to change gender, and now lives and writes as Jan Morris, and is always welcomed to our Welsh reunions. She continues to write prolifically and I envy the ease with which she does so, although A Writers World published in 2003 may be her swansong. She was recntly awarded the CBE
Imagine that, the expedition that finally summited Everest had a transgendered member. I'm gobsmacked, more so because I never knew, I'd heard of Jan Morris of course but not in the context of Everest and see how he just switched from 'he' to 'she', that was nice.
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Novus ordo saeculorum
A new order of ages.
So what? you say. Well towards the end of the book is a 'what happened to them afterwards' heres an extract about James Morris,
James Morris was the 'anonymous' Special Correspondent of The Times attached to the expedition. ....... Although we never realised it in the 1950s, as he described in his book Conundrum, James increasingly felt he was a female imprisoned in a male body. After his children had reached maturity, he therefore took the brave and bold step to change gender, and now lives and writes as Jan Morris, and is always welcomed to our Welsh reunions. She continues to write prolifically and I envy the ease with which she does so, although A Writers World published in 2003 may be her swansong. She was recntly awarded the CBE
Imagine that, the expedition that finally summited Everest had a transgendered member. I'm gobsmacked, more so because I never knew, I'd heard of Jan Morris of course but not in the context of Everest and see how he just switched from 'he' to 'she', that was nice.
----------------------
Novus ordo saeculorum
A new order of ages.
posted by Gillian at 4:28 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah cool bit of tranny trivia that eh? Suprised you hadn't known that already being our Tranny Mountaineer....
Jan, and her son, gave an interview to The Sunday Times Magazine some years ago, as part of the Relative Values feature. I found that quite inspiring. I've never come across a copy of Conundrum in my travels, though.
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