Smoothing the rough edges

Much is made by writers these days of the need for ‘getting distance’, for putting frontiers, oceans, whole continents between themselves and the sources of their inspiration. A spell on a Mediterranean island, a prolonged residence in some foreign capital or a creative writing fellowship at an American university are all supposed to do the trick. To advertise the whole business more effectively, you can always engineer a noisy parting of the ways with the British reading public, so unforgiving of your success, so philistine and parochial, and flounce off to New York, where your genius will be properly nurtured and cosseted.

For Brian Moore, the necessary distance was acquired through a fortunate combination of accident and circumstance, as opposed to any deliberate gesture of angry alienation. It was as a journalist that he chose to emigrate from Britain to Canada in 1947, though with nothing in the way of a specific job to look forward to.