Alan Moorehead

Alan Moorehead (1910–1983) was an Australian journalist and author whose narrative histories covered European exploration, World War II, and the Suez Crisis.

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The Blue Nile: Alan Moorehead’s 1962 history of European exploration and conquest in the Ethiopian highlands and the Nile basin. This acclaimed book shows how he made exploration history vivid through political and personal narratives.
The Suez Crisis: The 1956 confrontation over Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and the invasion by Britain, France, and Israel. Moorehead reported the crisis and later made it the subject of a book-length history.
Keith Murdoch: An Australian journalist and newspaper proprietor who led the Herald and Weekly Times group. Moorehead began his journalism career at the Melbourne Herald, part of Murdoch’s newspaper group.
The Origins of the First World War: The historical inquiry into the political and military causes of the First World War. Unlike Moorehead’s campaign narratives, this topic centers on contested explanations of a war’s origins.
The White Nile: Alan Moorehead’s 1960 history of European exploration along the White Nile and in Central Africa. Its success established the exploration narrative that he continued in The Blue Nile.
Second World War: A global war fought from 1939 to 1945 between the Allies and the Axis powers. His dispatches and books drew on reporting across several Allied campaigns.
George Orwell: An English novelist, essayist, and journalist known for political writing and works including Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell and Moorehead were fellow journalists whose wartime reporting appeared in British newspapers.
Military history: The study of warfare, armed forces, campaigns, and their political and social contexts. Moorehead’s campaign books are narrative contributions to this broader historical field.
Gallipoli: Alan Moorehead’s 1956 history of the 1915 Allied campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula. His account of the failed campaign drew on his experience reporting the Second World War.
North African campaign: The Second World War struggle between Allied and Axis forces across North Africa from 1940 to 1943. Moorehead reported from this theater and wrote several accounts of its campaigns.