Dawn Parade

The British-led Mediterranean Expeditionary Force that attacked the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli in 1915 was a multi-national affair, including Australian, New Zealand, Irish, French, and Indian soldiers. Ultimately a failure, the campaign ended with the withdrawal of the Allied forces after less than nine months and the unexpected victory of the Ottoman armies and their German allies. In Britain, the campaign led to the removal of Churchill from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and the abandonment of the plan to attack Germany via its 'soft underbelly' in the East. Thereafter, it was largely forgotten on a national level, commemorated only in specific localities linked to the campaign. In post-war Turkey, by contrast, the memory of Gallipoli played an important role in the formation of a Turkish national identity, celebrating both the ordinary soldier and the genius of the republic's first president, Mustafa Kemal. The campaign served a similarly important formative role in both Australia and New Zealand, where it is commemorated annually on Anzac Day. For the southern Irish, meanwhile, the bitter memory of service for the King in a botched campaign was forgotten for decades. Shaped initially by the imperatives of war-time, and the needs of the grief-stricken and the bereft, the memory of Gallipoli has been re-made time and again over the last century. For the Turks an inspirational victory, for many on the Allied side a glorious and romantic defeat, for others still an episode best forgotten, 'Gallipoli' has meant different things to different people, serving by turns as an occasion of sincere and heartfelt sorrow, an opportunity for separatist and feminist protest, and a formative influence in the forging of national identities.

Anzac Memories was first published to acclaim in 1994, and has achieved international renown for its pioneering contribution to the study of war memory and mythology. Michael McKernan wrote that the book gave ‘as good a picture of the impact of the Great War on individuals and Australia as we are likely to get in this generation’, and Michael Roper concluded that ‘an immense achievement of this book is that it so clearly illuminates the historical processes that left men like my grandfather forever struggling to fashion myths which they could live by’. In this new edition Alistair Thomson explores how the Anzac legend has transformed over the past quarter century, how a ‘post-memory’ of the Great War creates new challenges and opportunities for making sense of the national past, and how veterans’ war memories can still challenge and complicate national mythologies. He returns to a family war history that he could not write about twenty years ago because of the stigma of war and mental illness, and he uses newly released Repatriation files to question his own earlier account of veterans’ post-war lives and memories and to think afresh about war and memory.

70 Years After Its Debut, The First Canadian War Play Has Been Exhaustively Researched and Restored For This Limited-Edition Volume.

Journey with Diana Kappel-Smith into the nocturnal world of wild North America. Night Life combines scientific descriptions and personal reflections on creatures ranging from spiders and snakes to large predators of the northern Plains.

The death of a local tax-collector spells trouble for Libertus in this compelling historical mystery. Having been inveigled into standing for the local curia, responsible for the submission of all local tax, Libertus discovers that any shortfall must be made good by the councillors themselves. So when news arrives that a tax-collector from a nearby outpost has committed suicide, having gambled everything away, Libertus is despatched to make enquiries, in the hope of recovering at least some of the missing revenue. He has also been asked to attend a wedding, in place of his patron, who is expecting a visit from an Imperial Legate. But the assignment which should have seen Libertus for once treated as an honoured guest begins to take grisly and unexpected turns. As he pieces together the unlikely truth, Libertus finds himself in mortal danger. Freedom, in all forms, is only relative ? but there is a high price for it, sometimes paid in blood ?