Jan Morris’s Venice was a bestseller when it was first published in 1960, has been revised several times and is still being carried along the canals by first-time visitors to the city. In the Kirker Spring Lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London (Tuesday, May 12), Jan Morris and Venice — “The Dream of It”, Sara Wheeler, whose authorised biography of Morris will be published in April, will reveal that the relationship between the writer and the city extended far beyond that one volume. We’re told that some of Wheeler’s new material “is surprising – even shocking — but it reveals that Venice was never far from Morris’s imagination. Everything, she said, flowed from ‘the dream of it’.”

Proceeds from the event will go directly towards the conservation work of the Venice in Peril Fund.

Wheeler, as I’ve mentioned before, will also be among speakers at the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival, in Dorset, next month.