Ciao, Carpaccio: An infatuation - Tapa dura

Jan Morris is to other travel writers what John le Carré is to other spy novelists. She has the knack of her fellow masters ... of being able to barge in on strangeness and feel immediately at home. --New York Times

Our greatest living travel writer ... wise, well-read, wide-traveled, clear-sighted, compassionate, humane, unforgettable. --Paul Theroux

For sixty years she's been blending acute insights and warm intuitions into uniquely fluent, imperturbable, and evocative descriptions. --Pico Iyer

Morris has written a shelf-full of exceptional literature ... I love her attention to offbeat details, her eye for emblematic characters, her gentle humor and pointed wit, her encyclopedic knowledge of history and art, and the ongoing dance of research and apprehension, description and analysis that whirls through her writing. --Don George, Salon

Entertaining, ironical, witty, high spirited and appreciative ... Both melancholy and gay and worldly.' -- Geoffrey Grigson on Jan Morris's book 'Venice'

A taut and personal report, wholly absorbing, quickened by vivid prose and astringent humour. --Sunday Times on Jan Morris's book 'Venice'

She cherishes every cranny: [Venice's] 3,000 alleyways, its jails, its waterways and its buildings decaying like 'dukes in threadbare ermine'. She presents its past, its art and its language, which Byron called 'sweet bastard Latin'. A suitably respectful narration with an Italian flourish. --Rachel Redford, The Observer on Jan Morris's book 'Venice'

Morris fell in love with Venice when there during the Second World War, and her accumulation of memories is heartfelt, personal, quirky and enlightening. Perfect for a leisurely approach by Eurostar and night train to Venice, but just as good for whiling away the dull hours commuting to work. --Christina Hardyment, The Times on Jan Morris's book 'Venice'

The enthusiasm is infectious. Venetian history, culture, religion, food [Morris] relishes them all, from the glory years between the 12th and 15th centuries when La Serenissima controlled the trade routes between east and west, to the nuns at one of the more fashionable convents claiming their right to supply a mistress for the new papal nuncio, to the notice on the Grand Canal: 'It is forbidden to spit on the swimmers.' Don't go to Venice without it. --Sue Arnold, The Guardian on Jan Morris's book 'Venice'

A genial, witty, and touching journey through the endlessly evocative art of Carpaccio. Saluting the painter whose pictures remain some of the most enchanting ever made of Venice, Jan Morris makes her own last journey to a city she has written about like no other.