In 1940, Alan Moorehead was sent to cover the North Africa campaign by the Daily Express, and he followed its dramatic course all the way to 1943. The three books he subsequently wrote about the Desert War later collected as his African Trilogy were swiftly acclaimed as a classic account of the tussle between Montgomerys Eighth Army and Rommels Afrika Corps, amidst the endless harsh wastes of the Western Desert.

Moorehead was responsible for the celebrated insight that tank battles in the desert are like battles at sea, the lumbering tanks like ships lost in a vast ocean of sand. The New Statesman could not have put it better when it described his achievement with this riveting book:

There is something of genius in the breadth and penetration of his vision, which encompasses the whole panorama of war and then narrows it down to the particular: the soldier stubbing out his cigarette before going into action, the expression on a tank commanders face as he is hit The story of the African campaigns will go down in history as one of the great epics of mankind, largely thanks to Mr Mooreheads account.

Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne in 1910. Educated at Scotch College and Melbourne University, he was a reporter for the Melbourne Herald before sailing to London in 1936. He became foreign correspondent for the Daily Express, and ultimately one of the finest correspondents of World War II. After the war he turned from journalism to writing books, and in 1956 won the Duff Cooper Prize for Gallipoli. He was awarded the OBE in 1946 and the CBE in 1968. Alan Moorehead died in 1983. His 1944 book, The Desert War: The North Africa Campaign 1940-43 was republished by Aurum in 2009.