It is one of the history's great ironies that an English war correspondent sparked Australia's Gallipoli legend.
An accident of fate placed Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett on the battleship 'London' watching the Australians and New Zealanders storm the cliffs above Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. His stirring account of that day - described by the Australian war historian C.E.W. Bean as 'probably the finest of its kind ever penned by a war correspondent' - electrified the world, forever writing the Anzacs into Australia's national identity.
Ashmead-Bartlett was no fawning journalist. Disillusioned with British military bungles at Gallipoli he tried to smuggle a secret letter to the Prime minister exposing the looming disaster. He was thrown off the Gallipoli peninsula - but not before he had taken the only cinema footage of that historic failed expedition.
'Myth Maker' is the story of the cultured son of a British MP who changed the course of the Gallipoli campaign and ultimately the way we see ourselves as Australians.
Contents:
Introduction
1. An Explosive Start
2. All or Nothing
3. On the Road from Morocco
4. Three 'Gentlemen' of Gallipoli
5. A Race of Athletes
6. Igniting a Legend
7. 'Enough Glory for All'
8. A Very Personal War
9. 'This Should Draw all the Ladies of London'
10. 'They Cannot Long Conceal the Truth from the Public
11. 'I'm Glad We're Dyin' Game'
12. In the Antipodes: 'Horrible, Horrible, Horrible'
13. War Office Blackball
14. Seven Marriages, One Legal
15. Journalism and the Making of the Gallipoli Myth
Appendix 1: Report of the Gallipoli Landing
Appendix 2: Letter to the British Prime Minister
Bibliography
Index
