Anzac Guerrillas – Podcast
When the Germans took thousands of Allied prisoners during the catastrophic Greek campaign of 1941, a handful of Australian soldiers escaped from prison trains in occupied Yugoslavia. What awaited them was not passage home, but a brutal underground war where the fate of a nation was at stake.
Told through the eyes of two of the Australian escapees – mineworker Ross Sayers and storeman Ronald Jones – Anzac Guerrillas is the incredible true story of how these men became resistance fighters, double agents and spies, evading the Nazis and exposing a group of genocidal collaborators.
Tutmania: How Ancient Egypt Defined the Roaring Twenties
Reading time: 6 minutes
As the year 1922 dragged to a close, a weary public feared that it was doomed to die in doldrums. On the harrowing heels of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic came a “summer journalistically so dull that an English farmer’s report of a gooseberry the size of a crabapple achieved the main news pages of the London metropolitan dailies.” One Lord Carnarvon remembered that “the public was in a state of boredom with news of reparations, conferences, and mandates, and craved for some new topic of conversation.”
The Irish Rising that shaped Australia
Reading time: 4 minutes
Even though a rebellion in Dublin might seem relatively minor in the grand scheme of things,” says Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, Declan Kiberd, “it would actually be the pin piercing the heart of the imperial giant.
Life in an Australian field hospital in the Med during WW2
Reading time: 5 minutes
In our documentation of eyewitness accounts of Australians in the Med during WW II, we have mainly focused on the experiences of frontline troops and sailors, men who faced enemy fire and worse. What about people a little farther back from the front, those who took care of the wounded?
Karl Muller and the fatal lemon
Reading time: 6 minutes
Britain had been wary of foreign agents operating within its shores in the run up to the First World War, and the Secret Service Bureau – now commonly known as MI5 – had been established in 1909. It had found great success rounding up German spies when the conflict broke out. Nonetheless, it was vigilant that enemy operatives might attempt to send reports on Britain’s military and economy back home.
Napoleon’s bicentenary: why celebrating the French emperor has become so controversial
Reading time: 5 minutes
Napoleon Bonaparte may have died 200 years ago, but the vast ramifications of his rule can still be felt – and not only in France. This year marks the last in a series of bicentenaries since 1969, the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the chance to give the most famous emperor in French history another send-off is proving distinctly tricky – and not only because of COVID-19 restrictions.
From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony
Reading time: 7 minutes
After Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1770, the east coast of Australia was drawn on European maps of the globe for the first time. Yet, in terms of European contact with the continent, there was an 18-year lull in between Cook’s 1770 landings and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.
Love Thy Neighbour: The Importance of Guest Rights in Medieval England
Reading time: 7 minutes
In almost every country in the modern world, although some more than others, various institutions, laws and social norms protect travellers. Yet the institutions such as the courts and the government, or the enforcing bodies such as the police, have not always existed.
Confessions from the Cambridge Five: a file release from MI5
Reading time: 7 minutes
Over 100 Security Service (MI5) files are being released today covering a wide range of subjects and individuals. Most notably, the files offer fresh perspectives on notorious members of the Cambridge Five spy ring, namely Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and John Cairncross.
Wars of the Roses: how the French meddled in this very English conflict
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Wars of the Roses are normally portrayed as a series of battles between two warring houses, York and Lancaster, over who was rightly king of England. However, they were about much more than that. In many ways, the wars were really about standards of government.
The story of Nancy Wake
Reading time: 7 minutes
Nancy Wake (1912–2011) was an agent for the Special Operations Executive and the most wanted woman in France during the Second World War. Dubbed the ‘White Mouse’ by the Nazis, she was the one who always got away.
On a Wing and a Prayer – Vimy to Australia 1919-2019
On this day 100 years ago, G-EAOU, a converted World War I Vickers FB.27 Vimy Bomber, landed in Darwin at the conclusion of a stunning international flight, the first England-Australia flight and the world’s longest flight to date, in the Great England to Australia Air Race, 1919 – the achievement of which has been recently compared to […]
Adventurous identities: intersex soldiers and cross-dressing women at war
Reading time: 4 minutes
Pulaski is a hero of the struggles for Polish and American independence. He is credited with saving George Washington’s life in battle and with establishing the first American cavalry force. According to the documentary, DNA testing has confirmed a female-appearing skeleton is indeed Pulaski’s. This new evidence is the first hint that Pulaski – who seems to have lived as male from childhood – was anything other than a cisgendered man.
What was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and why does it still affect the Middle East today?
Reading time: 7 minutes
While this may be true, Sykes-Picot is still emblematic of how consequential European colonial ambition was in the Middle East. And while the borders outlined in the agreement did not eventuate, Britain and France still managed to get most of the territory they wanted, with little consideration of local populations. The Sykes-Picot agreement is therefore one of many colonial projects that we are still feeling the ripples of today.
The Greek and Cretan evacuations: Australians tell their stories
The Battle of Greece is a story of grit, determination, and sheer bloody-mindedness as an outnumbered force of British and Anzac troops successfully delayed the tide of Germans invading the Mediterranean country. The goal was to delay the advance long enough to allow for Allied troops to be evacuated from Greece, ready to fight another […]
Here are the five ancient Britons who make up the myth of King Arthur
Reading time: 6 minutes
King Arthur is probably the best known of all British mythological figures. He is a character from deep time celebrated across the world in literature, art and film as a doomed hero, energetically fighting the forces of evil. Most historians believe that the prototype for Arthur was a warlord living in the ruins of post-Roman Britain, but few can today agree on precisely who that was.
Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’
Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.
Remembering the Battle of Crete – 2025 Commemorations
This year is the 84th Anniversary of the Battle of Crete. The fighting around Rethymno will be commemorated in a series of events, listed below. 22nd May 2025 18:00 Memorial Service & reception at Armeni in the memory of the Greek Police General Stylianos Menioudakis (Armeni village, Municipality of Rethymno). 19:30 Memorial Service at the […]
The Malta convoys: Australian sailors speak
Reading time: 7 minutes
The island of Malta, located in almost the exact centre of the Mediterranean, was an important depot and staging post for the Allied efforts in North Africa and, later, the invasion of Italy. As a result, the Axis forces bombed it relentlessly for years, something you can read about more in our article on the Siege of Malta through Australian eyes.
What is suffragette white? The colour has a 110-year history as a protest tool
Reading time: 7 minutes
“Suffragette white” is proving to be a popular fashion choice for women who want to make a statement. Most recently, former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate donned a white jacket in her appearance before a Senate inquiry into her controversial departure from the organisation.
Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915
Reading time: 6 minutes
Many factors contributed to making the Gallipoli battlefield an almost unendurable place for all soldiers. The constant noise, cramped unsanitary conditions, disease, stenches, daily death of comrades, terrible food, lack of rest and thirst all contributed to the most gruelling conditions.
More than a century on, Gallipoli campaign should be more than just a symbol of futility
Reading time: 6 minutes
But the Gallipoli campaign’s result was especially troubling even at the time. Memorial services were held in April 1916 on the first anniversary of the initial landings. Subsequently, this anniversary has acquired special significance as Anzac Day, helping to shape and mark the transformation of Australia and New Zealand from British dominions to independent nations. And Gallipoli has become almost as notorious in British memory as the Somme and Passchendaele in symbolising the carnage of the war. The point is not simply the scale of the losses. It is also the fact that the campaign was so obviously a resounding defeat. What could have been more futile?
The forgotten Anzacs: ‘honoured guests’ of the Sultan
Reading time: 7 minutes
As we undertake our annual remembrance of Australians at war, some attention should be paid to those personnel who were taken captive by the enemy and then faced long years in brutal conditions. Enduring starvation, beatings, disease, death marches and forced labour in extreme climatic conditions, many of them died from casual neglect, deliberate abuse and untreated medical conditions. And I’m not talking about prisoners of the Japanese in World War Two, but Australians taken captive by Ottoman forces during The Great War.
Gallipoli’s rich history of conflict started well before 1915
Reading time: 5 minutes
There are few geographical areas that have seen as much military action as the Gallipoli region, the site of the Anzac landings in 1915. The conflicts in the region include some of the most renowned wars from Greek antiquity.