Winner, 2017Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards
Longlisted, 2016 Walkley Book Award
In this dazzling book, Thornton McCamish sets out in search of the remarkable, yet largely forgotten Australian writer Alan Moorehead.
A world-famous Australian writer, an inspiration to Robert Hughes and Clive James, a legendary war correspondent who also wrote bestselling histories of exploration and conservation . . . and yet forgotten? In this dazzling book, Thornton McCamish delves into the past to reclaim a remarkable figure, Alan Moorehead.
As a reporter, Moorehead witnessed many of the great historical events of the mid-20th century- the Spanish Civil War and both world wars, Cold War espionage, and decolonisation in Africa. He debated strategy with Churchill and Gandhi, fished with Hemingway, and drank with Graham Greene, Ava Gardner and Truman Capote. As well as being a regular contributor to the New Yorker, in 1956 Moorehead wrote the first significant book about the Gallipoli campaign.
With its countless adventures, its touch of jet-set glamour and its tragic arc, Moorehead's story is a beguiling one. Thornton McCamish tells it as a quest - intimate, perceptive and superbly entertaining. His funny, ardent book reveals an extraordinary Australian and takes its place in a fresh tradition of contemporary biography.