This authorized biography, with the help and blessing of Brian Moore and his wife Jean, pieces together the colourful and peripatetic life that lay behind his novels. It follows him from his childhood as one of nine children in a Catholic doctor's Belfast household to his role in World War II, travelling to Africa and war-ravaged Europe. Canada freed him to become a writer while it was in London in 1955 that he published his first novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. The United States became his home and his reputation grew as a writer's writer, accessible to all but also revered for his literary feats.