ABSTRACT
Through a close reading of Alan Moorehead's classic work, The Desert War, this chapter explores questions around the reporting of conflicts embedded within, yet seemingly separate from, issues of colonialism and imperialism. It suggests that the pervasive, long-standing presence of what Edward Said termed 'orientalism' within wartime reporting about North Africa has contributed to the effacement of the colonial contexts, not just at the time but as part of an ongoing substratum of representation and imagining, one arguably that continues to pervade contemporary Western commemoration. The fighting in North Africa began in September 1940 with the Italian army, based in its colony of Libya, invading Egypt, which was independent but dominated and influenced by the British who were determined to protect and control the Suez Canal. The Australian war correspondent Alan Moorehead covered the entire conflict. After his arrival in London in 1937 he became a journalist for the Daily Express newspaper and briefly covered the Spanish Civil War.
