Jan Morris, the writer who chronicled her sex-change operation in Conundrum, has had a civil union with the woman she first married nearly 60 years ago when she was a man.

Ms Morris and Elizabeth Tuckniss divorced in 1972, but continued to live together in Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd, North Wales. The civil ceremony took place last month at Pwllheli council office. One other couple witnessed them sign their names and invited them for tea at their house later.

Ms Morris told BBC Radio 4’s Bookclub: “We were married when I was young and [she] took the family name and then this sex-change, so-called, happened, so we naturally had to divorce. So we divorced, but we always lived together, anyway. It did not make any difference to me. We still had our family. We just carried on. I made my marriage vows 59 years ago and still have them.”

She said that she used to describe Ms Tuckniss as her sister-in-law. Her partner “always knew” of her belief that she should have been born female.

However it didn’t stop the couple having five children, one of whom died at two months old.

The civil union, she said, was to “round this thing off nicely”. She added: “We were offered biscuits and coffee. You had to sign your name and read a thing out, and that was it. Not like marriage vows really.”

James Morris, who served in Palestine in the Second World War with the 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers, became a legendary figure in the history of this newspaper after scooping the world with news of the success of John Hunt’s expedition to Everest in 1953.

Using coded messages, he relayed the news of Edmund Hillary and Norgay Tenzing’s ascent to London. The revelation coincided with the Queen’s Coronation. When receiving a CBE in 1999, Ms Morris told the Queen: “I was the person who brought the news back from Everest so that it got to you on time.”

Her memoir Conundrum is regarded as one of the most influential books on sex-change operations.

Ms Morris said that she became convinced that she was in the wrong body – not homosexual, just “wrongly equipped” – when she was at boarding school.

Earlier this year, The Times described her as the 15th greatest British writer since the Second World War.

She was warned by doctors that a sex change could have negative effects on her personality and literary talent. Nevertheless she began taking female hormones in the early 1960s.

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