Charles Bean Man, Myth, Legacy

Australia’s official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean was also Australia’s first official war historian and the driving force behind the creation of the Australian War Memorial. Famously criticized for his deliberate myth-making as editor of The Anzac Book, Bean was also a public servant, institutional leader, author, activist, thinker, doer, philosopher, and polemicist. In Charles Bean, Man, myth, legacy, Australia’s top military historians – including Peter Stanley, Peter Burness, Michael McKernan, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Edwards, David Horner, Peter Rees and Craig Stockings – analyze the man, the myth, and his long-reaching legacy.

Peter Stanley is Research Professor in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra. He has published 30 books, mostly in Australian military history but also in medical history, about the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire, and the military history of British India. He is an Associate Director of ACSACS, the General Editor of the Army’s Cambridge University Press series and President of Honest History. His most recent book (with Vicken Babkenian) is Armenia, Australia & the Great War.