H. V. Morton

He first achieved fame in 1923 when, while working for the Daily Express, he covered the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.

In the late 1940s Morton, and Violet, immigrated to the Union of South Africa, settling near Cape Town in Somerset West.

[3] Morton was able to provide an eye witness account of the opening of the inner burial chamber containing the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun,[4] circumventing The Times exclusive rights to the story.

[5]His widely-read articles on the excavation helped establish Morton's reputation as a journalist and were a boon to the popularity of his travel writing and journalism.

In 1926 he wrote a series of articles for the Daily Express based on his travels around England in his bull-nosed Morris car.

Morton's first foreign travel book, In the Steps of the Master (1934), was well received and sold over half a million copies.

[citation needed] The Master of the title was Jesus, and the book was an account of Morton's travels in the Holy Land.

This was soon followed by In the Steps of St. Paul (1936), and describes Turkey 13 years after the Turkish War of Independence and its founding as a modern state.

In a diary entry from February 1941, he confessed: "I must say Nazi-ism has some fine qualities" and, "I am appalled to discover how many of Hitler's theories appeal to me".

[citation needed] Morton was a prolific writer, with a body of work consisting of several hundred newspaper, magazine articles and features, in addition to his published books.