All in!

Not many Australian historians have managed to publish major books, based on years of scholarly research, which have evoked both immediate and enduring acclaim. It therefore says something both about intrinsic value and about the tastes of the book-buying public when such a book goes into a second or even a third edition, ten or more years after its first appearance. The weeks preceding Anzac Day are always a popular time for the publication of books on military history, but this year has been especially notable for witnessing a number of reissues, alongside a flood of new titles. The two under review here are the third edition of Jeffrey Grey’s A Military History of Australia, and the second edition of David Horner’s and Jean Bou’s history of the Royal Australian Regiment, Duty First. Others include the third edition of Ken Inglis’s highly acclaimed study of war memorials, Sacred Places, and new issues of Ross McMullin’s biography of Major General ‘Pompey’ Elliott and Gavan Daws’s Prisoners of the Japanese.

Jeffrey Grey’s name will be familiar to readers of ABR (indeed, he reviews a new book on the 1941 Greek campaign on page 14), but his reputation as a leading authority on Australian military history is probably better established in the United States than it is here. Grey has spent two years as a visiting professor at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, and has frequently visited the United States, where military history is taken more seriously in universities and military establishments than in their Australian counterparts. He has dedicated years to the application of the methods of leading American military historians to Australian defence.