Henry Reynolds

It worked for playwright Alan Seymour 50 years ago and it is working for historians Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake today. Having a dig at Anzac, that is.

Battle-weary: Henry Reynolds argues our war efforts have distorted our overall sense of national history.

Reynolds and Lake, fine historians both, are making ripples with their new book, the provocatively titled What’s Wrong with Anzac?  The questionmark is a fig leaf, as the book sets out, in emphatic fashion, what the authors think is wrong with our most cherished piece of national mythology. Their subtitle is The Militarisation of Australian History.

In short, Reynolds and Lake believe recent emphasis on our military past, and especially Gallipoli and its commemoration on Anzac Day, has distorted and devalued Australia’s true history. They blame governments past and present, which probably makes them long odds to go back-to-back in the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction (they got the nod last year for Drawing the Global Colour Line.)

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  • acotrel says:

    08:12am | 17/04/10

    Every Australian should visit Villers Brettoneux to gain an understanding of what our guys achieved on the Western Front.  They won the war with Monash as leader.  We lost 60,000 servicemen in two world wars.  In the main they were fighting for democracy - so we’d have the right to… Read more »

  • Brett L says:

    09:55pm | 16/04/10

    Mr Chong for some reason you feel dissociated with Australia and it’s history. I feel proud to hear about the personal sacrifices of what our young men did during those times. In their mind what they did was for the greater good of our country.  And allowing a supply line… Read more »

 

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