An extract from Jan Morris’s speech from our 40th birthday party
As a foretaste of our 50th anniversary celebrations, here is an extract from a speech by Jan Morris from our 2010 40th birthday party at Aberystwyth rugby club!
“For four decades Planet has been taking me to a range of places that have marvellously extended my own horizons: places metaphysical as well as geographical, places of the mind, places of dreams, places maddening and many places seductive. Time and again, a bit like one of those Google maps, the magazine has taken me upwards and outwards from the fulcrum of Wales to the furthest reaches of discussion and discovery. And year by year, too, it seems to me, Planet itself has assumed ever more confident citizenship of everywhere. It has never, of course, weakened in its Welshness, looking at everything from a Welsh perspective. But as our country has, to my mind, thrown off many of its self-doubts and querulous introspections, so Planet and its contributors now survey creation with a far easier sense of authority.
The essential attitude of the magazine remains, as I see it, one of tolerance, readiness to accept or at least seriously consider anybody's ideas, experience and aspirations, anywhere in any language, courteously introducing them to one another in this particular minuscule corner of humanity's home. I myself believe in the ultimate power and importance of kindness, which seems to me to stand above all religions, ideologies, superstitions or nationalities, and of course a vital component of kindness is tolerance. One very bright small body in the firmament of kindness - more than a star - a planet in fact! - is the phenomenon whose existence we celebrate tonight. Long may it shine!”
Jan Morris at Planet's birthday party, 2010 © Planet.
