Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3103884 in Books
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

About the Author
Alan Moorehead was an Australian who came to London as a journalist in his mid-twenties in 1926. He worked for the Daily Express before turning, after the war, to full time writing books, and contributing to the New Yorker. He was awarded the OBE in 1946, the CBE in 1968. He died in 1983.

Customer Reviews

Part travel book part military history
This is one of the most gripping accounts of WWII I have read. Alan Moorehead was war correspondent for the Daily Mail during the war in Africa 1940-43, ad in this highly personal account he describes not only the reality of the frontline, but visits many places not covered in other accounts, like Etheopia and Iraq. He has a vividly descriptive writing style, conjouring up powerfull pictures in the readers mind. These detailed episodes zoom the reader into the heart of the battle, yet the book still manages to give the overview of things.

Although part military history, the book is also fascinating travel writing, his tours of colonial Africa describing ways of life that have vanished now. Moorehead always seems to find a way of enjoying a civilized meal even amidst the horror of war.

Although it took me a long time to read the book, I think in every chapter I thought "Wow Ive never read anything about this before" A truly excellent book.