Jan Morris’s book Venice topped bestseller lists around the world when it burst onto a staid literary scene in 1960 and remains to this day one of the most inspired and best-loved accounts of the city. But in this talk, to coincide with the publication of Sara Wheeler’s official biography, we discover that the relationship between the celebrated travel writer and Venice was far more complex and profound than that one volume suggests.

Morris had pulled into a desolate Serenissima on a troop train in 1946, a gauche, nineteen-year -old Cavalry lieutenant who had to be pushed into a smoky Harry’s Bar by his comrades. Seven decades later, on the last of many glorious visits, the patron of Harry’s crowned his customer as one of the ‘Immortals’. Venice had changed, of course. But so had Morris.

For this year’s Kirker Spring Lecture in aid of Venice in Peril Fund Sara Wheeler, herself a pioneering travel writer, shines a light on Morris and the city that enthralled her. Drawing on personal correspondence and family archives, some of her material will surprise, but it will also show that Venice was never far from Morris’s imagination. Everything, she said flowed from ’the dream of it’. 

Sara Wheeler’s biography, Jan Morris: A Life, will be published by Faber on 9 April 2026 and signed copies will be available to buy at this event.