Alan Moorehead

Alan Moorehead AO,OBE
Moorehead (left) withAlexander Cliffordduring the North African Campaign
Born	Alan McCrae Moorehead (1910-07-22)22 July 1910 Melbourne,Victoria, Australia
Died	29 September 1983(1983-09-29)(aged 73) London,England, United Kingdom
Resting place	Hampstead Cemetery
Education	Scotch College, Melbourne
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Spouse	Lucy Milner ​ (m.1940)​
Children	Caroline Moorehead

Alan McCrae Moorehead,AO,OBE(22 July 1910 – 29 September 1983) was awar correspondentand author of popular histories,most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile,The White Nile(1960) andThe Blue Nile(1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.

Biography

Alan Moorehead was born inMelbourne,Australia. He was educated atScotch College,with aBachelor of Artsfrom theUniversity of Melbourne.He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the LondonDaily Express.Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. He married Lucy Milner, who at theDaily Expressin 1937 "presided over awomen's pagefree of the patronising sentimentality which marked much writing for women at the time ".

DuringWorld War IIhe won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and Asia, theMediterraneanand Northwest Europe.

He was twicementioned in despatchesand was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire.According to the criticClive James,"Moorehead was there for the battles and the conferences through North Africa, Italy and Normandy all the way to the end. The hefty but unputdownableAfrican Trilogy,still in print today, is perhaps the best example of Moorehead's characteristic virtue as a war correspondent: he could widen the local story to include its global implications. "And James further affirmed, "His copy was world-famous at the time and has stayed good; he was a far better reporter on combat than his friendErnest Hemingway."Moorehead's 1946 biography ofMontgomeryalso remains well considered – "Moorehead was well able to see – asWilmotcalamitously didn't – thatEisenhowerwas Montgomery's superior in character and judgment. "

In 1956, his bookGallipoliaboutthe Allies' disastrousFirst World Warcampaign atGallipoli,received almost unprecedented critical acclaim (though it was later criticised by the British Gallipoli historianRobert Rhodes Jamesas "deeply flawed and grievously over-praised" ). In England, the book won theSunday Timesthousand-pound award and gold medal was the first recipient of theDuff Cooper Memorial Award.The presentation of the latter was made bySir Winston Churchillon 28 November 1956.

In 1966, Moorehead and his wife, younger son and daughter (Caroline Moorehead) made what became for him the first of an annual series of visits to Australia. There he had completed a television script for his manuscript "Darwin and the Beagle", but tragedy struck before the book was published. That December, suffering from headaches, he went into London'sWestminster Hospitalfor anangiogramwhich precipitated a major stroke.

Through his wife, Lucy, however, his writing voice went on.Darwin and the Beaglewas brought out as an illustrated book in 1969. In 1972, she gathered together her husband's scattered autobiographical essays and published them asA Late Education.Moorehead died in London in 1983, and is buried atHampstead Cemetery,Fortune Green.

Legacy

His professional and personal correspondence — diaries, magazine and journal essays, press cuttings, book serialisations, reviews of his works, the background notes, drafts and proofs of his writings, and material relating to his unpublished writings — have been preserved.

During the 1960s, two major American universities pressed Moorehead to deposit his private papers as a core of their collections of contemporary writers. Instead, in 1971, Alan and Lucy Moorehead brought his papers to Australia to present them in person to theNational Library.

Bibliography

Books

• Mediterranean Front(Hamish Hamilton,1941) & (US: McGraw, 1942); A journal of his experiences during the first year of WW II whileGeneral Wavellwas in command, mostly in the Western Desert of North Africa.
• A Year of Battle(Hamish Hamilton, 1943) & (US: Harper, 1943) asDon't Blame the Generals;A journal of his experiences, while GeneralClaude Auchinleckwas in command, during the second year of WW II, mostly in the Western Desert of North Africa.
• The End in Africa(Hamish Hamilton, 1943) & (US: Harper, 1943); A journal of his experiences, while General Montgomery was in command, during the third year of WW II, mostly in the Western Desert of North Africa.
• African Trilogy(Hamish Hamilton) & (Harper, 1945); A compendium of the above three books,Mediterranean Front,A Year of BattleandThe End in Africa.Abridged edition:The Desert War(Hamish Hamilton, 1965), published in America asThe March to Tunis:The North African War: 1940–1943(Harper, 1967).
• Eclipse(Hamish Hamilton, 1946); A journal of his experiences, starting at the northern shore of Sicily, just before the Allies first set foot on the mainland at the southern tip of Italy in September 1943, through theSalernoandAnzio landings,then passing to theNormandy landings,Operation Market Garden,theRhine crossing,and the final downfall of the Nazi empire (abridged edition, 1967).
• Montgomery: A Biography(Hamish Hamilton, 1946).
• The Rage of the Vulture(Hamish Hamilton, 1948); a novel set in Kashmir in 1947 amid an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen which Moorehead had reported for the 'Observer'. Filmed in 1951 asThunder in the East.
• The Villa Diana(Hamish Hamilton, 1951); travels through post-war Italy, illustrated byOsbert Lancaster.
• The Traitors: The Double Life ofFuchs,Pontecorvo,andNunn May(Hamish Hamilton, 1952); revised edition 1963.
• Rum Jungle(Hamish Hamilton, 1953); personal travels through the center and north of Australia with the history of the regions, including the uranium-richRum Jungle.
• A Summer Night(Hamish Hamilton, 1954).
• Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph(US: Houghton Mifflin, 1955).
• Gallipoli(Hamish Hamilton, 1956); new edition 1967.
• The Russian Revolution(Collins/Hamish Hamilton, 1958).
• No Room in The Ark(Hamish Hamilton, 1959).
• The White Nile(Hamish Hamilton, 1960); revised and illustrated edition, 1971. Abridged illustrated edition as:The Story of the White Nile(Harper & Row,1967).
• Churchill: A Pictorial Biography(Viking, 1960);Churchill and his World: A Pictorial Biography(Thames & Hudson, 1965; Revised edition).
• The Blue Nile(Hamish Hamilton, 1962); revised and illustrated edition, 1972. Abridged illustrated edition as:The Story of the Blue Nile(Harper & Row, 1966).
• Cooper's Creek(Hamish Hamilton, 1963); about theBurke and Wills expeditionacross Australia
• The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767–1840(Hamish Hamilton, 1966); revised, illustrated edition, 1987.
• Darwin and the Beagle(Hamish Hamilton, 1969).
• A Late Education: Episodes in a Life(Hamish Hamilton, 1970); autobiography, and his friendship withAlexander Cliffordduring theSpanish Civil Warand World War II.

Contributions toThe New Yorker

Incomplete – to be updated

Title	Department	Volume/Part	Date	Page(s)	Subject(s)
Illustrious Sir: If You Value Your Life...	A Reporter in Sicily	25/50	4 February 1950	36–47	The Sicilian banditSalvatore Giuliano.

Further reading and related links

• Tom Pocock.Alan Moorehead.London: The Bodley Head, 1990.
• Richard Knott.The Trio.The History Press, 2015.
• Moyal, Ann Mozley. (2005).Alan Moorehead: A Rediscovery.Canberra:National Library of Australia.ISBN978-0-642-27616-2
• Pollinger Ltd.Archived17 January 2014 at theWayback Machine,Estate manager
• McCamish, Thornton. (2016).Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead.Carlton: Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd.ISBN978-1-863-95827-1