Henry Vollam Morton

Tomb of Tutankhamun

In 1923 the Daily Express sent Morton to Egypt to cover the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb. Morton was able to provide an eye witness account of the opening of the inner burial chamber containing the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, circumventing The Times exclusive rights to the story. A day after the opening, the discovery was reported in the Daily Express:

His widely-read articles on the excavation helped establish Morton's reputation as a journalist and were a boon to the popularity of his travel writing and journalism. Between 1931 and 1942, he was "special writer" at the Daily Herald. In 1941, he was a reporter at the Atlantic Charter between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, which later became the subject of his book Atlantic Meeting, published 1943.

Travel writing Morton's first book, The Heart of London, appeared in 1925, which developed his popular Daily Express columns. This was followed by two further collections of his writings on London, in The Spell of London (1926), and Nights of London (1926). In 1926 he wrote a series of articles for the Daily Express based on his travels around England in his bull-nosed Morris car. The series was entitled In Search of England and the vignettes were later adapted into the book of the same name. This became a bestseller and the first of his many In Search of... books.

Morton's first foreign travel book, In the Steps of the Master (1934), was well received and sold over half a million copies. The Master of the title was Jesus, and the book was an account of Morton's travels in the Holy Land. This was soon followed by In the Steps of St. Paul (1936), and describes Turkey 13 years after the Turkish War of Independence and its founding as a modern state. This was followed by Through Lands of the Bible (1938) in which he visits Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq. Extracts from all three books were combined and published as Middle East during World War II for British servicemen stationed in the Middle East.

In addition to Atlantic Meeting (1941), Morton wrote two books describing England and the War, including collection of essays on London in The Ghosts of London (1939), I Saw Two Englands (1942), and I, James Blunt describing England after the Nazi victory, being fictional propaganda for the British Government. A full-length history of London, (In Search of London) (1951), includes a post-war examination of bombing damage inflicted on London during The Blitz. After the war, South Africa was the subject of In Search of South Africa (1948), and shortly afterwards he and his wife immigrated there. During the mid-1950s and 60s he wrote books on Spain and Italy. A Traveller in Italy is situated in Northern Italy, while A Traveller in Southern Italy explores the poorer provinces of the south.

Honours Morton became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). Greece made him a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix in 1937 and he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1965. A commemorative blue plaque was erected in Ashton-under-Lyne (Morton's birthplace) in June 2004.

Controversy A controversial biography by Michael Bartholomew, based on Morton's private and public writings, titled In Search of H. V. Morton, was published by Methuen in 2004. According to Bartholomew, based on Morton's private memoirs and diaries, Morton was privately a Nazi sympathizer. In a diary entry from February 1941, he confessed: "I must say Nazi-ism has some fine qualities" and, "I am appalled to discover how many of Hitler's theories appeal to me". In another entry, he described the United States as "that craven nation of Jews and foreigners".

Publications Morton was a prolific writer, with a body of work consisting of several hundred newspaper, magazine articles and features, in addition to his published books.

Title Year The Heart of London 11 June 1925 The Spell of London 11 February 1926 London June 1926 A London Year July 29, 1926 The London Scene 1926 The London Year, A Book of Many Moods 1926 The Nights of London 11 November 1926 When You go to London 1927 May Fair: How the Site of a Low Carnival Became the Heart of Fashionable London 1927 In Search of England 2 June 1927 The Call of England 7 June 1928 Fleet Exercise in the Mediterranean April 1929 (series) In Search of Scotland 1 August 1929 The Soul of Scotland 1930 In Search of Ireland 4 December 1930 In Search of Wales 16 June 1932 Blue Days at Sea, and Other Essays 20 October 1932 Glastonbury, the Jerusalem of England 1933 What I Saw in The Slums 1933 A London Year (second edition, revised) 1933 In Scotland Again 26 October 1933 In The Steps of the Master October 1934 Our Fellow Men 7 May 1936 In The Steps of St. Paul October 1936 London: A Guide 1937 Through Lands of The Bible 27 October 1938 The Ghosts of London 16 November 1939 Travel in War Time circa 1940 H.V. Morton's London 31 October 1940 Women of the Bible 21 November 1940 Middle East 5 June 1941 I, James Blunt 1942 I Saw Two Englands 15 October 1942 Atlantic Meeting 1 April 1943 Travels in Palestine and Syria September 1944 In Search of South Africa 21 October 1948 In Search of London 24 May 1951 In The Steps of Jesus 1953 A Stranger in Spain 3 February 1955 A Traveller in Rome 29 August 1957 This is Rome 1959 This is the Holy Land 1961 A Traveller in Italy 24 September 1964 The Waters of Rome 1966 A Traveller in Southern Italy 1969 H.V. Morton's Britain February 1969 The Fountains of Rome (new edition of The Waters of Rome) 1970 H.V. Morton's England 5 June 1975 The Splendour of Scotland 11 November 1976 The Magic of Ireland 17 August 1978 In Search of The Holy Land April 1979