Beyond The Broken Years

Australian military history in 1000 books

By Peter Stanley

Published by Newsouth

RRP $39.99 in paperback

ISBN 9781761170140 

The title of this book—Beyond The Broken Years—references Bill Gammage’s classic on World War One, The Broken Years, Australian Soldiers in the Great War, fifty years after its publication.

It was the first doctoral thesis to be written in Australian military history, and, according to Peter Stanley, its publication marked the re-invention of Australian military history, written not by a ‘returned man’ as with so many earlier books but by an historian bringing an historian’s discipline to the topic not to mention exploiting the previously untapped resource of private wartime letters and diaries held at the Australian War Memorial.

This is an engaging book, particularly for someone such as me who has seen many of the books Stanley mentions come across his desk in the decades this reviewer’s column has appeared in Australian Defence Magazine.  It’s a fascinating book on the topic.

He gives a shout out to the publishers who took a gamble on public interest in military history, especially Big Sky Publishing under Denny Neave. That was well deserved.

Many of the names and book titles he references will be familiar to readers, from the obvious—Charles Bean—to the highly regarded Joan Beaumont and David Horner but there are many others mentioned who represent the cream of Australian military history scholarship.

Stanley respects the considered and deeply researched scholarship of his peers but he reserves particular distain for the ‘popular’ writers of military history such as Peter FitzSimons. In FitzSimons’ defence, he describes himself as a ‘storyteller’. I suspect though the readership of popular authors such as FitzSimons far outstrips the readership of the historians he reveres.

VERDICT: A fascinating book—on the one hand it is thoughtful and insightful and on the other, entertaining and eminently readable.