History
comes to life with Peter FitzSimons
True as ever to his mantra of
‘Make it live and breathe’ FitzSimons takes us deep into the devastation of the
Gallipoli campaign. The men, the leaders, and the fateful steps that lead them
to disaster.
On 25 April 1915, Allied forces
landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in present-day Turkey to secure the sea route
between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. After eight
months of terrible fighting, they would fail.
Turkey regards the victory to
this day as a defining moment in its history, a heroic last stand in the
defence of the nation’s Ottoman Empire. But, counter-intuitively, it would
signify something perhaps even greater for the defeated Australians and New
Zealanders involved: the birth of their countries’ sense of nationhood.
Now approaching its centenary,
the Gallipoli campaign, commemorated each year on Anzac Day, reverberates with
importance as a symbol of what it truly means to be a New Zealander.
However, the facts of the battle
– which was minor against the scale of the First World War and cost less than a
sixth of the Australian deaths on the Western Front – are often forgotten or
obscured.
Peter FitzSimons, with his
trademark vibrancy and expert melding of writing and research, recreates the
disaster as experienced by those who endured it or perished in the attempt.
Come to Gallipoli with Peter, his most harrowing, humanising and moving book to
date.
Peter FitzSimons is a journalist with the Sydney
Morning Herald and Sun-Herald. He is also a regular TV commentator,
a former radio presenter (very successfully, with Mike Carlton on Radio 2UE)
and a former national representative rugby union player. Peter is the author of
over 20 books - including Tobruk, Kokoda, Batavia, Mawson and the Ice
Men of the Heroic Age, Ned Kelly and biographies of Nancy Wake‚
Kim Beazley‚ Nick Farr-Jones‚ Les Darcy, Steve Waugh and John Eales.
Peter is Australia’s biggest-selling non-fiction author of the last ten years.
Peter was named a Member of
the Order of Australia for service to literature as a biographer, sports
journalist and commentator, and to the community through contributions to
conservation, disability care, social welfare and sporting organisations.
He lives with his wife,
Lisa Wilkinson, and their three children in Sydney.
Gallipoli
Random House
14 November 2014
RRP $56.99
Hardback
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