Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, Australia. He was educated at Scotch College, with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London "Daily Express". Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. He married Lucy Milner, who at the "Daily Express" in 1937 "presided over a women's page free of the patronising sentimentality which marked much writing for women at the time".