An astute assessment of the writing of Jan Morris came in the review of Conundrum, the account of her transition from man to woman, in the Observer by Bernard Levin in 1974. He spoke of how the writer, while James, “was blessed with a prose style of spare and sinuous grace, an eye of penetrating intensity, and an altogether exceptional ability to reach that level of his reader’s mind at which the spark of recognition jumps the gap and ignites understanding”.
