Moorehead, like so many ambitious young Australians, moved to the UK where he became the leading war correspondent for the Daily Express, publishing several books, including a trilogy on the African campaign, during World War II. After the war, he left the newspaper to write biographies, histories and travel books. He made several trips back to Australia and in 1963 published his famous book on Burke and Wills, Cooper’s Creek, influenced by his friend Sidney Nolan. He wrote more than twenty books over a thirty-year career.

Ann Moyal, as the title of her book implies, has set out to rehabilitate Moorehead’s reputation in this first volume of the National Library’s series An Australian Life. The National Library produces books that mimic exhibition catalogues: beautifully produced on dense, shiny paper cut wide to show off the illustrations. Fully supported by notes, bibliography and index, the book, strangely, offers no author biography. Clearly, though, Moyal is a Moorehead enthusiast. His personal foibles are played down and the work is in the foreground, leaving the loyal, long-suffering wife and the long, debilitating and ultimately fatal illness to take second place. This makes for a muted kind of reading experience: the usual emotional triggers of a biography are absent. However, it may send readers back to the books, which is no doubt Moyal’s intention.