Alan Moorehead
Encyclopedia
Alan McCrae Moorehead OBE (22 July 1910 — 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent
and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.
. He was educated at Scotch College
, with a BA from Melbourne University. He travelled to England
in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London
Daily 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 the Daily Express in 1937 "presided over a women's page free of the patronising sentimentality which marked much writing for women at the time".
During World War II
he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East
and Asia
, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe
http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/sep05/article4.html. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the OBE
. According to the critic Clive 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 unputdownable African 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 friend Ernest Hemingway
. " Moorehead's 1946 biography of Montgomery
also remains well considered - "Moorehead was well able to see - as Wilmot
calamitously didn't - that Eisenhower
was Montgomery's superior in character and judgment."
In 1956, his book Gallipoli about the Allies
' disastrous World War I
campaign at Gallipoli
, received almost unprecedented critical acclaim (though it was later criticized by the British Gallipoli historian Robert Rhodes James
as "deeply flawed and grievously over-praised"). In England, the book won the Sunday Times
thousand-pound award and gold medal was the first recipient of the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
. The presentation of the latter was made by Sir Winston Churchill
on 28 November 1956.
In 1966, Moorehead and his wife, younger son and daughter 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's Westminster Hospital
for an angiogram
which precipitated a major stroke
. It was followed by an operation, in which brain damage occurred, affecting the communicating nerves. At 56, Moorehead, one of the great communicators of his time, could neither speak, read, nor write.
Through his talented wife Lucy, however, his writing voice went on. Darwin and the Beagle was brought out as a beautifully illustrated book in 1969 and in 1972, Lucy Moorehead gathered together her husband's scattered autobiographical essays and published them as A Late Education. Moorehead died in London in 1983, and is buried at Hampstead Cemetery
, Fortune Green
.
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.
Biography
Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. He was educated at Scotch College
Scotch College, Melbourne
Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....
, with a BA from Melbourne University. He travelled to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
. 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 the Daily Express in 1937 "presided over a women's page free of the patronising sentimentality which marked much writing for women at the time".
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/sep05/article4.html. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
. According to the critic Clive James
Clive James
Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...
: "Moorehead was there for the battles and the conferences through North Africa, Italy and Normandy all the way to the end. The hefty but unputdownable African 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 friend Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
. " Moorehead's 1946 biography of Montgomery
Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC , nicknamed "Monty" and the "Spartan General" was a British Army officer. He saw action in the First World War, when he was seriously wounded, and during the Second World War he commanded the 8th Army from...
also remains well considered - "Moorehead was well able to see - as Wilmot
Chester Wilmot
Reginald William Winchester Wilmot was an Australian war correspondent who reported for the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during the Second World War. After the war he continued to work as a broadcast reporter, and wrote a well-appreciated book about the liberation of Europe...
calamitously didn't - that Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
was Montgomery's superior in character and judgment."
In 1956, his book Gallipoli about the Allies
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
' disastrous World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
campaign at Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
, received almost unprecedented critical acclaim (though it was later criticized by the British Gallipoli historian Robert Rhodes James
Robert Rhodes James
Sir Robert Vidal Rhodes James was a British historian and Conservative Member of Parliament. He was born in India and began his education in private schools there, returning to England to attend Sedbergh School and then Worcester College, Oxford.He wrote his first book, a much-acclaimed biography...
as "deeply flawed and grievously over-praised"). In England, the book won the Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
thousand-pound award and gold medal was the first recipient of the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
Duff Cooper Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and acclaimed author. The prize was first awarded...
. The presentation of the latter was made by Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
on 28 November 1956.
In 1966, Moorehead and his wife, younger son and daughter 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's Westminster Hospital
Westminster Hospital
Westminster Hospital was a hospital in London, England, founded in 1719. In 1834 a medical school attached to the hospital was formally founded....
for an angiogram
Angiogram
Angiography or arteriography is a medical imaging technique used to visualize the inside, or lumen, of blood vessels and organs of the body, with particular interest in the arteries, veins and the heart chambers...
which precipitated a major stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. It was followed by an operation, in which brain damage occurred, affecting the communicating nerves. At 56, Moorehead, one of the great communicators of his time, could neither speak, read, nor write.
Through his talented wife Lucy, however, his writing voice went on. Darwin and the Beagle was brought out as a beautifully illustrated book in 1969 and in 1972, Lucy Moorehead gathered together her husband's scattered autobiographical essays and published them as A Late Education. Moorehead died in London in 1983, and is buried at Hampstead Cemetery
Hampstead Cemetery
Hampstead Cemetery is a historic cemetery in West Hampstead, London, located at the upper extremity of the NW6 district. Despite the name, the cemetery is three-quarters of a mile from Hampstead Village, and bears a different postcode...
, Fortune Green
Fortune Green
Fortune Green was originally part of the district of Hampstead but became physically separated from it by the building of the new turnpike road in the 1830s....
.
Legacy
- It is due largely to Lucy Moorehead's administrative talent and commitment throughout her husband's career that his private papers—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 so comprehensively 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 the National LibraryNational Library of AustraliaThe National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
. http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/sep05/article4.html
Books
- Mediterranean Front (Hamish HamiltonHamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
, 1941; McGraw, 1942) A journal of his experiences during the first year of WW II while General WavellArchibald Wavell, 1st Earl WavellField Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, PC was a British field marshal and the commander of British Army forces in the Middle East during the Second World War. He led British forces to victory over the Italians, only to be defeated by the German army...
was in command, mostly in the Western Desert of North Africa. - A Year of Battle (Hamish HamiltonHamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
, 1943) & (Harper, 1943) as Don't Blame the Generals. A journal of his experiences, while General Claude AuchinleckClaude AuchinleckField Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, GCB, GCIE, CSI, DSO, OBE , nicknamed "The Auk", was a British army commander during World War II. He was a career soldier who spent much of his military career in India, where he developed a love of the country and a lasting affinity for the soldiers...
was in command, during the second year of WW II, mostly in the Western Desert of North Africa. - The End in Africa (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 HamiltonHamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
& Harper, 1945). A compendium of the above three books, Mediterranean Front, A Year of Battle and The End in Africa. Abridged edition The Desert War (Hamish HamiltonHamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
, 1965), published in America as The March to Tunis:The North African War: 1940-1943 (Harper, 1967). - Eclipse (1946), Hamish HamiltonHamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton . Confusingly, Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton...
. 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 the Salerno and Anzio landings, then passing to the Normandy landings, Operation Market Garden, the Rhine crossing, and the final downfall of the Nazi empire. (Abridged edition, 1967) - Montgomery: A Biography (1946)
- The Rage of the Vulture (1948). A novel set in Kashmir in 1947 amid an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen which Moorehead had reported for the 'Observer'.
- The Villa Diana (1951)
- The Traitors: The Double Life of Fuchs, Pontecorvo, and Nunn May (1952) (Revised edition 1963)
- Rum Jungle (1953)
- A Summer Night (1954)
- Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph (1955)
- Gallipoli (1956) (new edition 1967)
- The Russian Revolution (1958)
- No Room in The Ark (1959)
- The White Nile (1960; Abridged illustrated edition, 1967) as The Story of the White Nile, Harper & Row
- Churchill: A Pictorial Biography (Viking, 1960); Churchill and his World: A Pictorial Biography (Thames & Hudson, 1965; Revised edition)
- The Blue Nile (1962; Abridged illustrated edition, 1966) as The Story of the Blue Nile, Harper & Row
- Cooper's Creek (1963), about the Burke and Wills expeditionBurke and Wills expeditionIn 1860–61, Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills led an expedition of 19 men with the intention of crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250 kilometres...
across Australia - The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840 (1966; Revised, illustrated edition, 1987), Harper & Row
- Darwin and the Beagle (1969)
- A Late Education: Episodes in a Life (1970), autobiography, and his friendship with Alexander CliffordAlexander CliffordAlexander G. Clifford was a British journalist and author, best known as a war correspondent during World War II.-Life:Clifford married the actress and journalist Jennie Prydie Nicholson on 22 February 1945 in the Savoy Chapel, London; she was the eldest child of poet and author Robert Graves...
during the Spanish Civil War and World War II
Contributions to The 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 bandit Salvatore Giuliano Salvatore Giuliano Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death... . |
Related links
- Pollinger, Ltd. - Alan Moorehead
- Alan Moorehead, A Rediscovery - Ann Moyal published by the National Library of Australia
Further reading
- Tom Pocock. Alan Moorehead. London: The Bodley Head, 1990.
- Moyal, Ann Mozley. (2005). Alan Moorehead: A Rediscovery. Canberra: National Library of AustraliaNational Library of AustraliaThe National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
. 10-ISBN 0-642-27616-1; 13-ISBN 978-0-642-27616-2