Description
Title: Anzac Memories – Living the Legend
Author: Thomson, Alistair
Condition: Mint
Edition: 3rd Edition
Publication Date: 1996
ISBN: 0195537432
Cover: Hard Cover with Dust Jacket – 282 pages
Comments: 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’.
The Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) legend rests upon the assumption that Australia came of age as a nation when the Anzacs landed on Gallipoli on April 25, 1915 during the First World War. This legend is integral to the Australian sense of nationhood and national character.
In this highly original book, Alistair Thompson explores both the creation of the legend, and, most crucially, its effect upon those who have lived in its shadow–the survivors of the great war. Looking at the legend’s changing significance for Australian politics and society, the author draws on personal interviews with surviving war veterans, as well as the official histories of Charles Bean, and the depiction of Anzacs in nineties novels and movies.
