A Late Education: Episodes In a Life

by Alan Moorehead

Book Overview

Compelling self-portrait of the author's flight from Australia to the ex-patriate scene of London & Paris, & his career as an overseas correspondent, covering WWI in North Africa & Europe. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006013027X
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A very fine memoir

Alan Moorehead was a war correspondent during WW2 and since authored a number of fine documentary works, including the White Nile, Gallipoli, and many more. In this book he recounts episodes from his fascinating vocation, mostly from around WW2, but the book is also a heartfelt memoir of a life long relationship with a dear friend and colleague. The stories include some excellent commentary his journalistic approach, and give a glimpse of his fantastic writing career, developing from a mildly uninspired Australian schoolboy into one of the finest documentary authors of the 20th century. Alan Moorehead has the uncanny ability to keep the reader's eyes glued to the pages. He is enormously satisfying and enjoyable to read. He must have been a person of great compassion and intelligence, and I imagine him being moved by a unflinching desire to search for and faithfully report the truth.

A great experience.

To the other glowing reviews I can only add that it's worthwhile for the piece about Hemingway alone. The final chapter was emotionally wrenching and unforgettable

Uncategorisable account of friendship and war

I got into Alan Moorehead by picking up an old Penguin edition of A Late Education second-hand at South Melbourne market. Since then, I've read more, and it seems to me that Moorehead is one of the great prose stylists of the 20th Century. The Australian Moorehead was a war correspondent in Europe during the Spanish Civil War and WWII. This is an account of Moorehead's friendship with another young war correspondent, Alex Clifford, throughout the North African and Western European campaigns, and after the war, up to Clifford's untimely early death. It is a fascinating portrait of young journalists thrown into adventure and danger, and of a unique friendship that grew as a result. As such, it's a kind of mix of The English Patient and Salvador - and very well written.