I Read Books: Venice by Jan Morris
This isn’t a history of Venice, though it has vast and enlightening amounts of history of the city within it. Nor is it a guidebook, though it can certainly be used as one. The back cover suggests it is a portrait of the city, which isn’t quite right, and also a biography which gets very close to the point.
This is perhaps a serious book-length profile of the city (such as might be done more briefly about a person in a weekend newspaper magazine) by someone who has visited and lived there. They have done enormous amounts of research on the history, and spent time tootling around the lagoon in a boat. There’s a lot about what Morris thinks about the city and her impressions, there’s also a lot of details of what other people did and thought about the city.
There is always something new and interesting in each chapter, sometimes an anecdote so real you feel as though you’re standing behind Morris watching, sometimes a snippet of information (in the 12th Century false beards were banned because assassins kept using them). More often it is about a place, a building, and the spirit of the location.
Read This: You will learn a lot about Venice, including about the less visited parts of the lagoon, with gorgeous writing
Don’t Read This: If idiosyncratic organisation of non-fiction will annoy you
Comments