Alan Moorehead: a rediscovery - National Library of Australia

149 Pages·2009·12.34 MB·English

AN AUSTRALIAN LIFE
ALAN a rediscovery
MOOREHEAD Ann Moyal
Alan Moorehead
A Rediscovery
ANN MOYAL
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
CANBERRA 2005
Published by the National Library of Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia
®National Library of Australia and Ann Moyal 2005
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Moyal, Ann (Ann Mozley), 1926- .
Alan Moorehead : A Rediscovery.
ISBN 0 642 27616 1.
1. Moorehead, Alan, 1910-1983. 2. War correspondents-
Australia—Biography. 3. Journalists—Australia-
Biography. 4. Historians—Australia-Biography. I.
National Library of Australia. II. Title. (Series : An
Australian life).
070.92
Publisher's editor: Leora Kirwan
Designer: Kathryn Wright
Printer: van Gastel Printing Pty Ltd
Every reasonable endeavour has been made to contact relevant copyright
holders. Where this has not been possible, copyright holders are invited to
contact the publisher.
iv
Contents
Illustrations vi
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Chapters
The Making of a Journalist I
'The Prince of War Correspondents' II
Echoes of Battle 27
The Mediterranean Man 39
Gallipoli 53
A Love Affair with Africa 67
Cooper's Creek 8I
The Australian 95
The Writer III
Notes on Sources I2I
Endnotes I24
Index I34
V
List of Illustrations
Cover: Portrait of Alan Moorehead by Karl Pollak
Page ii: Portrait of Alan Moorehead [1965] by Louis Kahan
Page xiv: First passport to the rest of the world, with Herald letter 1936
Page 8: Alan Moorehead and Lucy in Rome on their wedding day 1939
Page 10: Alan Moorehead with his friend and colleague Alexander
Clifford in the Western Desert, 1940s
Page 25: Letter from Alan Moorehead
to Lord Beaverbrook, July 1946
Page 26: Field Marshal Montgomery, 1940s
Page 38: Alan Moorhead receiving the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for
Gallipoli from Winston Churchill, 1956
Page 52: Cover of Gallipoli
Page 63: Angus £t Robertson window display of books by Alan
Moorehead, 1956
Page 66: Alan Moorehead on the Nile
Page 80: Cover of Cooper's Creek
Page 88: Hand-corrected typescript page of the first draft of
Cooper's Creek
Page 94: Alan Moorehead in Antarctica, 1964
Page 98: Alan Moorehead with Sidney Nolan in Shackleton's hut,
Antarctica, 1964
Page 110: Alan Moorehead at the Great Barrier Reef, 1965
vi
Books by Alan Moorehead
Mediterranean Front, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1941
A Year of Battle, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943
The End in Africa, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943
African Trilogy: The North African Campaign 1940-43,
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1944
Eclipse, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945
Montgomery, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946
The Rage of the Vulture, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948
The Villa Diana, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951
The Traitors: The Double Life of Fuchs, Pontecorvo and Nunn May,
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952
Rum Jungle, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953
A Summer Night, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954
Winston Churchill in Trial and in Triumph, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955
Gallipoli, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956
The Russian Revolution, Geneva: Edito-Service; distributed by Heron
Books, 1958
No Room in the Ark, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959
Churchill: A Pictorial Biography, London: Thames and Hudson, 1960
The White Nile, New York: Harper, 1960
The Blue Nile, New York: Harper and Row, 1962
Cooper's Creek, New York: Harper and Row, 1963
The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the Pacific 1767-1840,
London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966
Darwin and the Beagle, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969
A Late Education, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970
vii
To Manning and Dymphna Clark,
in memory
viii
Acknowledgments
I have much cause for grateful acknowledgments to many people for
their assistance and stimulus to me in the writing of this book.
I first discussed the idea of such a book with Helen Kon, Assistant
Director-General and head of the National Library of Australia's Public
Programs Division, and received her lively encouragement. Thereafter
Dr Paul Hetherington, Director of Publications and a self-confessed
admirer of Alan Moorehead's writings since his youth, invited me to
write a short biography in the Library's new series, An Australian Life.
My thanks are due to them both.
Graeme Powell, Manuscript Librarian, gave me his knowledgeable
help and guidance during my research on the large collection of Alan
Moorehead papers held in the Library. I have also been most ably assisted
by the staff of the Manuscript Reading Room, and, as always, I have
benefited from the sustained and friendly assistance of the Petherick
Room librarians.
My editor, Leora Kirwan, has added meticulously and imaginatively
to the book's production.
My thanks are also due to Jinx Nolan for allowing privileged access
to Cynthia Nolan's papers held in the Manuscript Collection of the
National Library and for her permission to publish several extracts
from the correspondence of Alan Moorehead and Sidney Nolan.
Late in 2003, in the course of drafting its chapters, I had the great
pleasure of a three-week residential General Retreat Fellowship
at Varuna, the Eleanor Dark Foundation at Katoomba. There, in the
beautiful setting of the Blue Mountains, the peaceful concentration and
the wonderful food and accommodation afforded by the Fellowship,
together with the company of a small group of other writers, offered
singular encouragement to writing. It was an enlivening and memorable
experience and a privilege which I acknowledge with gratitude.
ix
My particular thanks are due to Caroline Moorehead who has provided
me with insightful reflections about her father and her mother, and
to John Moorehead for his recollections about a father who was often
absent but maintained contact with his children during his travels
through 'excellent letters' that gave advice and suggestions 'always
worth reading'.
Other stimulus and encouraging ideas have also come from a number of
people who have read and been influenced, professionally or personally,
by Alan Moorehead's books. They include Sir David Attenborough,
who started his career of travelling the globe and producing wildlife
documentaries for the BBC after reading Moorehead's 'wonderful book,
The White Nile'; Phillip Knightley, who, being given Moorehead's war
publications African Trilogy and Eclipse to read as a young cadet on
the Sydney Telegraph, determined to set off for Britain and a career
as a distinguished journalist and writer; and Patrick Walters of The
Australian who was profoundly influenced by A Late Education when he
was a student at The King's School, Parramatta and set his sights on a
career as a journalist, reader and traveller, all of which he has become.
Others have been very constructive and helpful to me in various
ways. Jamie Mackie has been a vital discussant, reader and editor
and I thank him for his invaluable contribution. I would also like to
thank Professors Bernard Smith, Ken Inglis, and A.G.L. Shaw, Dr John
Thompson, Dr Carolyn Rasmussen, Jan Nicholas, Mimi Hurley and
Anna Lanyon for their timely and most useful communications.
ANN MOYAL
Canberra, 2004
x
Preface
Across the first quarter century that blossomed after World War 2,
Alan Moorehead was a literary star, one of the most successful writers
in English of his day. Born in Melbourne in 1910 and educated at
Scotch College and Melbourne University, he had by the 1960s built
a larger international reputation than any other Australian writer.
As Britain's most renowned war correspondent, the acclaimed author
of a series of outstanding works on the campaigns of World War 2,
the biographer of Montgomery and Churchill, a prolific international
journalist, a historical writer, novelist, and a major travel writer of his
time, Moorehead was a household name in Britain and widely admired
in the United States of America for both his books and his articles in
the New Yorker. At the same time, the translation of his works into
a medley of European languages-French, German, Italian, Swedish,
Danish, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish—and into Hebrew, Egyptian,
Arabic and Japanese, engaged audiences around the world.
Yet as an Australian expatriate living in Britain and Italy and a major
contributor to Australian and world history, Alan Moorehead has been
less recognised in his own country than abroad. By the early 1960s,
several American universities, building their collections of significant
writers of the twentieth century, sought to make his personal papers
the core of important new Australian collections in their keeping. In
Australia, by contrast, entries on Moorehead in anthologies of Australian
writers and historians are scant. Few readers today are familiar with his
books, and even fewer among the younger generation know his name.
During his lifetime-he died in 1983—Moorehead's books went into
multiple editions. During the last decade, several of his historical
works were reprinted in Britain while Text Publishing, Melbourne,
reissued his outstanding Desert War collective, African Trilogy, Eclipse
and his autobiographical, A Late Education. However, apart from
xi