Contact!

A Book of Glimpses

Jan Morris

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571250707
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Literary Essays

In Contact! Jan turns her brilliantly observant eye to the human contacts she made, across the globe and though the decades. As a series of vignettes, some only a few lines long, she records hundreds of brief glimpses and fleeting encounters, celebrating the people who helped spark her view of the world and mould her responses. A vast range of human experience is here: most are anonymous, everyday encounters - children playing, a homeless man in Manhattan, a lascivious taxi-driver - but she also remembers celebrated figures, from Yves San Laurent to King Hussein of Jordan, President Truman to Peter OToole.

Contact! is a must for any fans of Jan's writing. Her great sense of amusement, shrewd eye for detail and huge enthusiasm for her contacts makes these episodes incredibly enjoyable - and often profound.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introductory
• Contact!
• A sighting in Texas
• Manhattan dialogue
• At the hotel door
• Self-discipline
• Honesty
• Not Chopin
• After the ball was over
• The student’s request
• Déjà entendu!
• Breath of the woods
• Costa del Sol, 1960s
• Caravan of martyrs
• Trial of an alleged spy
• The one left behind
• Haute couture
• Dialogues on the Orient Express
• If you prick us?
• The sprig of rosemary
• Different responses
• Flying the flag
• The Frenchest person
• A fine scoundrel
• Enjoy yourself!
• The helmsman
• A literary test
• Judgement
• Byronic
• Doubly damned
• Dung and diplomacy
• Steamboat Gothic
• War story
• Chinese jingles
• At El Kharga
• The European
• Hero of the Soviet Union
• The choice
• A Gypsy kiss
• Understanding the truth
• Social status in the people’s dictatorship
• Baleful eyes
• Passing the nut
• The master glass-blower
• Awful, really
• Changing the guard
• Looking after the place
• Alien visitors
• You’re welcome
• I was in a stingy mood
• Two Kiwis
• Two Jocks
• Four Londoners
• In academia
• Definitely not
• The captain of the Saratoga
• Young man with a gun
• More organic patriots
• Fishing lady
• Coffee time
• In London, 1980s
• Magnifique!
• West Pointer
• An Irish experience
• Young Iceland
• After Perón
• The proclamation
• Reassurance
• No reply
• Possibilities of misfortune
• My dinner companion
• Diplomats and a pianist
• Impact!
• Style
• On an Oxford evening
• The moment of victory
• At Schwab’s
• A royal court
• Politicians
• Perfect understanding
• Snow in Holland
• Joburgers
• ‘The same again’
• Home are the hunters!
• The quarry clerk
• Pretty children
• Lese-majesty
• A hated man
• America, America!
• Responses on the road
• Widowhood
• Moon men
• Ethel in Egypt
• Birth of a taste
• Hospitable cop
• A glimpse of power, 1950s
• Another time, perhaps
• At a Patagonian airfield
• Makings of a microcosm
• The only place for him
• Flowers and the tribesmen
• Uncle Henry and the planter
• Family home
• Key West, 1960s
• All in the family
• Marching with us!
• Economic imperative
• Sporting pleasures!
• The French swimmer
• Thrashing as they went
• Forty tailors and a camel driver
• Singin’ in the dawn
• ‘I hope you see it truly’
• Not altogether intelligible
• The croupier
• Mormon faithful
• His Highness
• Feudalism
• Merciless fish
• Nanny talk
• Chief of the Egyptians
• Anglo-Sudanese
• An exotic
• Mr Beebe
• Battle hardened
• Celebrating with Breughel
• Shoeshine
• We did not linger
• A family outing
• Tactful parent
• A small magnifico
• A large magnifico
• A snatch of sound in Morocco
• ‘Ain’t that right?’
• In a trance?
• The truth of it
• Urgent inquiries
• On the waterfront
• Empire builders?
• Icelandic allegory
• Wedding pictures
• A holy clock
• Silly question
• Expertise
• First time lucky!
• Advice
• Racial tension
• Kurds on the move
• Before fame hit him
• ‘Mamma mia!’
• An apartheid queue
• Old-school flying
• Festivities!
• Aloofly towards the dawn
• Mother Russia
• ‘Nobody’s used this cup’
• Expatriatism
• On second thoughts
• Alas, proved right
• A Mikado
• Beggars and buskers
• Among the Delhi Spearmen
• Mixed sensations
• Sharing the pleasure
• Siren call
• Valleys music
• R.I.P.
• Levantine life
• America verbatim
• An indistinct saint
• Mayor Murphy’s inducements
• Things to attend to
• Give and take
• The judge
• Across a chasm
• Dead guys
• Duke of London
• Magic in Paris
• Insufficient compassion
• Dignities
• Iddums-diddums
• In the park
• Tradition
• Arrival of the tourists
• Teatime in Old Chicago, 1950s
• A separate sphere?
• ‘Are they?’
• Tyrant
• Divine merriment
• Violetta down under
• The Leading Citizen’s lesson
• The Very Reverend
• Our Gracie
• The exchange
• Temper of the South
• Monty
• Confrontation
• The spy’s discomfort
• Admiral’s walk
• True gents
• The Low Riders
• The call of conscience
• A lesson
• After a Mexican dinner
• Harry’s
• Only in London
• No thanks
• Glaswegians
• Wildlife
• Two in the morning
• Two Berlins
• Algérie Française
• Allegory in Amsterdam
• All American
• Dinkum Aussie
• Suddenly there emerges …
• A queen rides by
• Saturday lunch in Hong Kong
• Immigrants
• An ugliness
• ‘We’d be famous’
• Subterraneanism
• In Old Vienna
• Altercation on the Zephyr
• A very Irish lady
• Liveable city
• A performance in Athens
• Positive identification
• Last post
• Breakfast Cokes
• Grand cru
• Through a hole in the wall
• Homesickness
• Grecian collusion
• Nothing to say
• Who cared?
• Too late
• City of Art and Culture
• God bless Swissness!
• Norway, 1950s
• Welsh pride
• ‘Ai, ai, ai’
• The first of the Morgans
• Hell’s traffic
• Frenchness like a cloak
• They thought not
• The Smile Test
• Suburban enchantment
• GORGE
• Seen from a bus
• Very simple matters
• I smell
• Bastille Day
• At the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem
• Waiting for Churchill
• Home thoughts from Barbados
• End of a battle
• Among the treasures
• Affronted
• A lovely dream
• Fair enough
• Proverb in Formosa
• Opposite directions
• At the theatre
• Schooner travel
• The clock and the nougat
• The portrait
• ‘For heaven’s sake’
• Wine of the country
• Holy experiences
• Sacred memories
• Reciprocal ill will
• ‘Oes heddwch?’
• Small change
• Incidental music
• The Algerian gardener
• The matter with me
• To touch the owl
• The friar’s warning
• One can always tell
• Marvellously goes the elk meat
• The red tarboosh
• Dance music
• The three days
• At a Breton window
• Do I know her?
• Salon life
• Days of liberty!
• Harry’s Challenge
• In other circumstances
• Below the ships
• Colombian coffee
• Through a glass darkly
• Joking on the coastal route
• Pan’s blood
• Canadian arrivals
• Destiny in Missouri
• A cabman’s wink
• The touch of a hand at home
• Index
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright