Charles Bean

Australia’s official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean was also Australia’s first official war historian and the driving force behind the creation of the Australian War Memorial. Famously criticised for his deliberate myth-making as editor of The Anzac Book, Bean was also a public servant, institutional leader, author, activist, thinker, doer, philosopher, and polemicist.

In Charles Bean, Man, myth, legacy, Australia’s top military historians – including Peter Stanley, Peter Burness, Michael McKernan, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Edwards, David Horner, Peter Rees and Craig Stockings – analyse the man, the myth, and his long-reaching legacy.