Volume 21, Number 7 · May 2, 1974
Sir or Madam
By John Richardson
Conundrum
by Jan Morris
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 174 pp., $5.95
Uppermost in Christopher Robin's prayers, if we are to believe A.A. Milne, were Mummie, Daddy, and Nanny—not, however, in James Morris's. 'Please, God,' went this little boy's nightly orison, 'let me be a girl. Amen.' And he made the same prayer whenever he 'saw a shooting star, won a wishbone contest, or visited a Blarney well.' His persistence was rewarded, but not for forty years. In the summer of 1972, thanks to the intervention of a Moroccan surgeon, this popular British author—ex-cavalry officer, foreign correspondent, mountain climber, father of four—became Jan: a sister-in-law to his wife, 'an adoring if interfering' Auntie Jan to his children.
Review, 3418 words
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