Life on the edge

Simon Winchester was delighted to receive an invitation to give the keynote address at the Southeast Asian Writers Awards ceremony in Bangkok last month. “It gave me an unexpected opportunity to pop over to Phnom Penh and see my son,” he says with a grin.
In 1977, Winchester was posted to New Delhi as India correspondent for the Guardian. To get there, he drove the family Volvo from Oxford to New Delhi by way of Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan at a time when it was possible to drive through the Middle East.
“Funnily enough the person I drove with was my son. He’s now the business editor of the Phnom Penh Post. He’s more interesting than I am. He’s been based there for eight months now,” says Winchester, relaxing over a drink in the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok’s Bamboo Bar.
Over the next three years, Winchester reported on the emergency rule of Indira Gandhi, the Soviet-backed coup d’etat in Afghanistan, and various assassinations and small wars.
He recalls how one day, while was living in the Indian capital, a story required him to travel to Peshawar via the Khyber Pass.
“I forget what the story was, but I had to go to Landi Kotal on top of the Khyber Pass. To any Englishman, the Khyber Pass has so much romance. I mean, people like Alexander the Great have passed through it. To get there, we had to go up and down the mountains three times. The third time, I said, ‘not the bloody Khyber Pass again’.” He laughs. “Nowadays you can’t go to the Khyber Pass. It’s too dangerous.”
Yet his journey to become a writer has been equally eventful.
As child, Winchester wanted to be a sailor but instead went on to study geology. After completing his studies at Oxford, he started work as a field geologist with a Canadian mining company in Uganda, a job he kept for six months. Inspired by James Morris’ travel books, he decided to switch to writing.
“In late 1966, I picked from the shelves of the British Council library in a place called Fort Portal, a slim blue book called ‘Coronation Everest’ by a man called James Morris. I read it in one sitting. It was fascinating. It was an account by Morris, who had been appointed London Times correspondent in 1953 of the expedition led by John Hunt that successfully reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 31, 1953.
“The remarkable thing about this book was that James Morris had never in his life climbed more than a small hill. He was sent by the Times to cover this particular expedition and he climbed to 24,000 feet, a remarkable achievement for someone who had never climbed a mountain in his life,” said Winchester.
Fascinated by Morris’ writing career, Winchester wrote him from Uganda: “I’m a 21-year-old geologist living in East Africa, I have just read your book, can I be you?”
Morris responded: “Mr Winchester, if you are serious, if you really think you can be a writer, I promise you it is the most wonderful profession but it depends on whether or not you can write. If you think you can, my advice to you is very simple – come back to England, not next week not next month but the day you receive this letter, get a job on a local newspaper and write to me again.”
He did exactly that.
Six months after his arrival in London, he landed a job as a reporter with The Newcastle Journal. He wrote to inform Morris of his progress: “Well I’ve done exactly as you’ve said. I’ve left Africa and I’m now working as a reporter, what now?”
Morris obviously hadn’t expected that to happen, but nonetheless gamely offered more advice.
“No 1: Never lose your sense of wonder. As a writer, you go all over the world you’ll meet all sorts of people, you’ll see terrible things, wonderful things, and you’ll meet despots and saints. Never become jaded, never become weary and always greet each morning with the privilege that you have as a writer to record the doings of the world. Never lose your sense of wonder.
“Every month package up the stories you’ve written for your newspaper and send them to me and I’ll read them, I’ll annotate them and I’ll try and turn you into a better writer.”
The two didn’t meet until August 1974. When they did, it was a weird encounter at Morris’ house.
“The door opened and a woman appeared. I looked up from a kneeling position and said: ‘Oh hello, I’m Simon Winchester, you must be Mrs Morris.”
The person replied, “No, I’m James actually.”
“I thought this is very strange, but then, this was the 1970s and people wore their hair rather long. I stood up and this person said, ‘I’ll get my wife’. I knew James had climbed Mount Everest, had been a soldier in the British army and had four children. He was very much a man’s man. I assumed it was a weird joke.
“So I was expecting whoever came down the stairs to have a beard and be wearing a jacket. But not at all … down the stairs came a middle-aged lady with a little girl in tow, and we all moved into the drawing room for tea.”
Next morning, an envelope was pushed under Winchester’s door. “Dear Simon,” it read. “I’m so sorry to have put you through what was somewhat an awkward social situation but the fact of the matter is I have decided after many years, that I’m going to become a woman, and I’m going to Casablanca next week to have the necessary surgery. If you can accept this, I hope you and I will remain friends. I have decided to take the name, if everything works perfectly, of Jan Morris. I hope you will remain my friend.
Jan is now 86 years old and she remains Winchester’s best friend.
Winchester says the story has had a remarkable circulation and, for many years afterwards the Guardian’s editors had used it in responding anyone who wrote in saying: “I want to become a reporter”.
 “They’d reply quite simply: ‘To become a journalist on this paper, you first take a degree in geology and make friends with a transsexual.’”
  
OFF THE PAGE
Simon Winchester’s next book, “The Man Who United States”, chronicles the birth of American democracy through Thomas Jefferson’s Land Ordinance of 1785. It’s due out soon.