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.
In the many books written about the campaign after the First World War, there is a constantly repeated belief that posterity would never forget what happened there. Such and such a regiment's bayonet charge will 'go down in history'; the deed is 'immortal' or 'imperishable; is enshrined forever in the records of the past. But who in this generation has heard of the Lancashire Landing, or Gully Ravine, or the Third Battle of Krithia? Even as names they have almost vanished out of memory, and whether this bill was taken or that trench was lost seems hardly to matter anymore. All becomes lost in a confused impression of waste and fruitless heroism, of out-of-dateless and littleness in another age.
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Fact
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Porto Ercole, Grosseto, Italy [January 2009]
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He was awarded the A.O. (Officer of the Order of Australia) in the 1978 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to Literature.
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He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1946 and the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1968 for his services to literature.
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