Dom Moraes Biography and latest books by Dom Moraes

Dominic Francis Moraes (19 July 1938 – 2 June 2004), also known as Dom Moraes, was a poet,  columnist and writer of Goan origin. He published nearly 30 books.

Moraes was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) to Beryl and Frank Moraes, former editor of the Times of India. Dom attended St. Mary\'s School (ISC), Mazagoan, Bombay, and Jesus College, Oxford University. Moraes lived in London, New York city, Hong Kong, Delhi and Mumbai.

Career

As a child he received a Jesuit education, but as a child, Frank had taken him to Australia and south-east Asia. By the age of 12, Dom had begun writing poetry, and a book on cricket. At the age of 16, Dom arrived in England and he began reading English at Jesus College, Oxford. The following year, his first book of poems, A Beginning, was published by David Archer\'s Parton Press and, in 1958, it won the Hawthornden Prize for "the best work of imagination". Dom, happened to be the first non-English person to win the prize, and was also the youngest.

In 1960, he published Poems, and the autobiographical Gone Away, about his travel experiences in India. Dom’s work was liked and he became a familiar and well-liked figure at poetry readings. By 1966, he had published Poems 1955-65. Two years later, settled in Islington, he published more autobiography, My Son\'s Father.

He then began to travel and visited almost every country in the world - and wrote travel books and a biography of Mrs Gandhi (1980). A third volume of autobiography, Never At Home (1994), was followed in 2001 by another poetry collection, In Cinnamon Shade.

He edited magazines in London, Hong Kong and New York. He became the editor of The Asia Magazine in 1971. He scripted and partially directed over 20 television documentaries for the BBC and ITV. He was a war correspondent in Algeria, Israel and Vietnam. In 1976 he joined the United Nations. Moraes conducted one of the first interviews of the Dalai Lama after the Tibetan spiritual leader fled to India in 1959. The Dalai Lama was then 23 and Moraes was 20. Moraes ended his writing career, writing books in collaboration with Sarayu Srivatsa.

He had a lifelong battle with alcoholism. Moraes suffered from cancer, but refused treatment and died from a heart attack in Bandra, Mumbai. He was buried in the Sewri Cemetery in Mumbai and as per his last wishes Sarayu Srivatsa buried the soil from his grave in Odcombe, Somerset, on 19 July, 2002. Many of Dom\'s old friends and publishers attended the memorial service in Odcombe. A headstone in yellow Jaisalmer stone lies embedded in the front lawn of the church to mark the service.

Personal life

In 1956, aged 18, he was courted by Henrietta Moraes. They married in 1961. He left her, according to his close friends in London, but never divorced her. He had a son, Heff Moraes, with his second wife Judith. He then married celebrated Indian actress and beauty pageant winner Leela Naidu and they were a star couple, known across continents. They separated in the mid-1990s.