"The Venetian Empire" by Jan Morris

Morris travels through the places colonised by the Venetians and provides a history as she does so. This book thus forms a sort of sequel to her Venice.

She has used this combination of travelogue and history before, such as in the brilliant Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, and I'm not sure why this book wearied me. Certainly there were plenty of fascinating facts and vivid characters, from the war over the ownership of a donkey to the narrow channel that experiences fourteen tides a day, from the original of Othello, surnamed Moro, which is probably why Shakespeare assumed him to be a Moor to the dreadful Uskoks of Dalmatia: “The Uskoks were originally Christian refugees from the eastern side of the mountains, who had escaped from the Turks by guile and violence, and set themselves up to prosper by similar means on the Dalmatian shore. They were epic villains. ... Uskoks liked to nail the turbans of Turkish prisoners to their heads and sometimes cut out the hearts of their still living captives (we read of a Venetian commander whose heart, in fact, was the piece-de-resistance of a celebratory banquet.)” (Adriatica). I learned a lot: we get our word 'argosy' from the fact that Dubrovnik, once called Ragusa, was famous for its merchants and the word 'syncretize' is derived from Crete.

But the glory of a Jan Morris book is her way with words. Her descriptions are stunning:

• “The tumult of it all (fragrance of frying fish from the floating restaurant by Galata Bridge, tinkle of brass bell from the water-seller outside the Egyptian Bazaar, swoop of dingy pigeons around the mosque of Yeni Cami)” (O City, City!)
• “Humped and speckled, lush or rocky, hefty or insubstantial, littering the waters between the Dardanelles and the Sea of Crete are the islands of the Aegean Sea.” (Aegeanics)
• “During the bitter winter it [Crete] can be magnificently awful. Then the clouds which hang so often round the mountain summits spread over the whole island, swirling above the passes in mists and rainstorms, and sometimes then, when the driven vapours are tinged with southern sunshine too, the place looks all afire. Crimson clouds scud by! The winds rush up those valleys like jets, and if it thunders the crash of it sounds among the highlands as though caves are there and then being split in the rocks.” (The Great Island)

Other selected quotes:
“Going home weary after the making of the world, God took with him a sack of unused stones, but the sack burst on his way across the skies, and so Montenegro was made.” (Adriatica)

August 2022; 187 pages

Other Jan Morris books reviewed in this blog include Coronation Everest.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God