Frank Moraes

Francis Robert "Frank" Moraes (12 November 1907 – 2 May 1974) was editor of many prominent newspapers in post-Independence India, including The Indian Express.

Born in Bombay (Mumbai) of Goan descent on 12 November 1907, Moraes was the son of Anthony Xavier Moraes, a Goan civil engineer. There has been considerable migration of Goans to Bombay for many decades. He spent his childhood in the city of Poona (Pune) in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, and studied at Catholic schools in both cities.

From 1923, he was at St Xavier's College where he studied History under Henry Heras and Economics, later moving to the University of Oxford where he read history. He was active in student politics, and edited the student newspaper Bharat. He also studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London, and was called to the Bar. In all, he spent seven years in England from 1927 to 1934.

Returning to India in 1934, he practised as a Barrister for a few months, and in 1936 joined The Times of India as a journalist, got promoted to junior assistant editor in 1938, and worked in Burma and China as the Times' war correspondent between 1942–1945.

Between 1946–1949, Moraes was based in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as editor of The Times Ceylon and The Morning Standard. He worked as the India correspondent of several British newspapers, and in 1950 became The Times of India's first "Indian editor", amidst a changing post-colonial situation.

On returning from Ceylon in 1949, Frank Moraes was named editor of The National Standard, a Goenka-owned Indian newspaper that later morphed into The Indian Express. According to another journalist of Goan origin, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, "[A]t that time I was on the news copy desk as well as being the music critic, and remember him as an individual who kept himself aloof, quite unlike other editors I have worked with. Six days a week he wrote the main editorial and a column he signed as 'Atticus'". Moraes left within months to be the editor at the Times of India.

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