Derek Johns

The Times Literary Supplement review opened by taking exception to Morris's claim that the flood of books about Venice had, by this period, dried to a trickle; but it accepted Morris's view that the best...

Her biographer Derek Johns calls this surely the best book ever written on its subject. He praises it for approaching Oxford with a kind of awe, but faults it for packing in possibly too much...

JM 's biographer found the compromise not wholly satisfactory.

Derek Johns points out that references to the author in the first person, which give an agreeably personal air to the writing, often modulate into the second person to suggest collusion between writer and reader:...

JM 's talents (which in childhood included a fine singing voice) embrace drawing as well as writing. Morris provided line decorations for From Hand to Hand, a translation into English by Richard C. Ruck

In the early 1990s Derek Johns became JM 's agent at A. P. Watt . He continued in that role until 2013, and published a monograph on Morris in 2016.

Hav provoked from JM 's biographer a discussion of the part played by fiction in her serious and supposedly factual writings. Morris, he wrote, called herself a romancer and admitted to touching up a scene...

Compared with its predecessor, said Johns , this volume reflects a growing awareness of the iniquities of the imperial system. It opens on a female observer of empire, the witty and accomplishedEmily Eden

Derek Johns observed that these are the most negative and critical pieces in Morris's travel oeuvre. The account of Sydney in particular is a hatchet job which drew angry responses from Guardian readers. Johns suggested...

JM published Sultan in Oman, which biographer Derek Johns calls Morris's only travel book, in the sense of being an account of one particular journey.