Allegorizings

by Jan Morris (Liveright, $25)

“Precious few” fine writers deliver farewell volumes that belong alongside their best work, said Sarah Moss in The New York Times. “This is such a book.” The “great intelligence and curiosity” of Welsh-born travel writer Jan Morris, who died at 94 in November, shines through in essays here about Princess Diana, a singular bridge in southern Norway, and sneezing. Yet the entries about aging and mortality linger in the mind most of all. “Old age,” Morris wrote, “is the right to be absolutely ourselves.”