Brian Moore (novelist)

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Brian Moore (August 25, 1921 – January 11, 1999) was a novelist. He published twenty novels, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and also worked as a screenwriter.

Moore was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 where he worked as a reporter for the Montreal Gazette. He became a Canadian citizen, and despite moving again to the United States in 1959, he maintained his Canadian citizenship.

Moore grew up in a large Roman Catholic family, but rejected that faith early in life. His father, a physician, was pro-Axis during World War II, although Moore himself worked for British intelligence at the time.

His novels had staunchly anti-doctrinaire and anti-dogmatic themes, and he in particular spoke strongly about the effect of the Church on life in Ireland, once saying that Ireland was "a nation of masturbators under priestly instruction."

His first novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, remains among his most highly regarded. It was made into a film, with Dame Maggie Smith playing the lonely spinster who is the book/film's title character.

Brian Moore died in 1999 at his home in Malibu, California, aged 77, of pulmonary fibrosis.