Brian Moore (novelist)

To mark the centenary in 2021 of Moore's birth, a project − Brian Moore at 100 − funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant, has sought to re-appraise, and revive scholarly and public interest in, his work. It includes a programme of research, public-facing events and an international academic conference.

Moore's beachside house in Malibu, California was celebrated in Seamus Heaney's poem Remembering Malibu. Moore's widow, Jean, lived in the house until it was destroyed in 2018 in the Woolsey Fire.

Brian Moore died at his Malibu home on 11 January 1999, aged 77, from pulmonary fibrosis. He had been working on a novel about the 19th-century French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. His last published work before his death was an essay entitled "Going Home". It was a reflection inspired by a visit he made to the grave in Connemara of his family friend, the Irish nationalist Bulmer Hobson. The essay was commissioned by Granta and published in The New York Times on 7 February 1999. Despite Moore's often conflicted attitude to Ireland and his Irishness, his concluding reflection in the piece was "The past is buried until, in Connemara, the sight of Bulmer Hobson's grave brings back those faces, those scenes, those sounds and smells which now live only in my memory. And in that moment I know that when I die I would like to come home at last to be buried here in this quiet place among the grazing cows."

Moore has been the subject of two biographies: Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist (1998) by Denis Sampson and Brian Moore: A Biography (2002) by Patricia Craig. Brian Moore and the Meaning of the Past (2007) by Patrick Hicks provides a critical retrospective of Moore's works. Information about the publishing of Moore's novel Judith Hearne, and the break-up of his marriage can be found in Diana Athill's memoir Stet (2000).

The Creative Writers Network in Northern Ireland launched in 1996 the Brian Moore Short Story Awards, which were open to all authors of Irish descent. The judges included Glenn Patterson, Lionel Shriver, Carlo Gébler and Maeve Binchy. The awards scheme continued until 2008 and is now defunct.

In 1975, Moore arranged for his literary materials, letters and documents to be deposited in the Special Collections Division of the University of Calgary Library, an inventory of which was published by the University of Calgary Press in 1987. Moore's archives, which include unfilmed screenplays, drafts of various novels, working notes, a 42-volume journal (1957–1998), and his correspondence [1], are now at The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Moore was married twice. His first marriage, in 1952, was to Jacqueline ("Jackie") Sirois (née Scully), a French Canadian and fellow-journalist with whom he had a son, Michael (who became a professional photographer), in 1953. They divorced in October 1967 and Jackie died in January 1976. Moore married his second wife, Jean Russell (née Denney), a former commentator on Canadian TV, in October 1967.

Moore wrote his first novels in Canada. His earliest books were thrillers, published under his own name or using the pseudonyms Bernard Mara or Michael Bryan. The first two of these pieces of pulp fiction, all of which he later disowned, were published in Canada by Harlequin – Wreath for a Redhead in March 1951 and The Executioners in July 1951.

in 1948 he emigrated to Canada to work as a reporter for the Montreal Gazette, and became a Canadian citizen. Moore lived in Canada from 1948 to 1958, moving to New York in 1959 to take up a Guggenheim Fellowship and remaining there until his divorce in 1967. He then moved to the west coast of the United States, settling in Malibu, California, with his new wife Jean. He taught creative writing at UCLA. While eventually making his primary residence in California, Moore continued to live part of each year in Canada up to his death.

Moore was a volunteer air raid warden during the Second World War and served during the Belfast Blitz in April and May 1941. He went on to serve as a civilian with the British Army in North Africa, Italy and France. After the war ended he worked in Eastern Europe for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Moore was educated at St Malachy's College, Belfast. He left the college in 1939, having failed his senior exams. The physical description of the school at the heart of The Feast of Lupercal matches closely that of Moore's alma mater and is widely held to be a lightly fictionalised setting of the college as he unfondly remembered it.

Brian Moore (/briˈæn/ bree-AN; 25 August 1921 – 11 January 1999), was a novelist and screenwriter from Northern Ireland, who emigrated to Canada and later lived in the United States. He was acclaimed for the descriptions in his novels of life in Northern Ireland during and after the Second World War, in particular his explorations of the inter-communal divisions of The Troubles, and has been described as "one of the few genuine masters of the contemporary novel". He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1975 and the inaugural Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1987, and he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times (in 1976, 1987 and 1990). Moore also wrote screenplays and several of his books were made into films.