Just visiting the excellent “1975” exhibition at the National Library of Australia. But look what you see on the very first panel - a warning that it deals with “some sensitive and distressing material “! Er, like every year in human history!

The Minister for Veterans' Affairs seems to be dragging his heels over new appointments to the Council of the Australian War Memorial. I've had a say about it at the invitation of the Canberra Times: www.defendingcountry.au/news/how-abo...

Very sad news from Canada. Respected Canadian military historian Tim Cook is dead. www.newswire.ca/news-release... I only met him once, but I admired and respected his work. As I've just said to a friend, 'he was the Canadian Jeff Grey' - a power in the field.

This is a common problem in Australia - apparently, 'we' fought for freedom on Gallipoli - although everyone alive in 1915 is now dead.

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the Australian landing on Tarakan, the subject of my forthcoming book, Oboe One: Tarakan, 1945, to be published soon by #BigSky. This is the draft cover - the new one's even better. It's a revised version of my 1997 book Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy.

Dr David Stephens, key player in Defending Country (which tries to hold the Australian War Memorial accountable over its representation of the Australian Wars, aka Frontier Conflict) thinks that the AWM has produced an exhibition about Defending Country, 'Critical Witness'. Apt, but no such luck ...

ArtSound FM Canberra is broadcasting my radio play 'Wanterwrite, Wanterlove' ( dramatising the courtship of Charles and Effie in 1920) at 1pm on Anzac Day, 4pm on the 27th and 10pm on the 28th - and you can listen to it outside Canberra on DAB+ 90.3 or on artsound.fm - listen any time. Enjoy!

search.app/57LfHNfcCCiD... I’m looking forward to speaking in the online talks program of the admirable Military History and Heritage Victoria, this evening 7pm.

I visited the Australian War Memorial yesterday and was pleased to see that the 10-pounder mountain gun, used by the Indian mountain batteries at Anzac, is still on display in the Gallipoli gallery. Their service is documented in my Die in Battle - the first book on Indians on Gallipoli (2015). #AWM

Yes! Garry Hills’s Great at Heart is a really good book, one we’ve been waiting for since Gavin Long died in 1968!

Whyalla needs all the help it can get. It’s not charity - Whyalla produces three-quarters of Australia’s steel. If it goes under we’d be even more vulnerable to the vagaries of the world economy - and Trump’s shenanigans has shown how dangerous that can be.

One of the pleasures of a public library in Anzac season is to surreptitiously ensure that the book display features you and your friends.Here in Dickson (ACT), books by (l to r) Mark Johnston, me, Douglas Newton and Ross McMullin - all worth reading this April!

I don’t know a lot about philosophy and what Kant, Spinoza and the Natural Philosophy gang thought about the nature of things, but I think that this is very funny. Perhaps graphics (aka comics) can illuminate the world?

Joining AUKUS is one of the dumbest decisions any Australian government has ever taken. Why didn't Albanese say 'let's think about this ...' - and then decide, saying, 'this is a lot of money with no guarantee of any submarines being delivered - and it destroys Australia's national sovereignty'.

I'm delighted to tell you that at 1 pm on Anzac Day ArtSound FM Canberra will broadcast my radio play 'Wanterwrite, Wanterlove' - about the courtship of Charles and Effie Bean at Tuggeranong while Charles was writing Vol. I of his official history, in the aftermath of the Great War.

Yes! I can’t believe how many people use ‘female’ or ‘male’ as a noun. It’s just wrong.

How ironic that The English Association abets the decay of the English language, by, for example, using unnecessary new terms like ‘access’ as a verb. There are perfectly good options already available to us - think about it!

My daughters loved to have me read this book to them, aged about 3-7 in the mid-1990s. Happy days.

Perhaps they should denounce their president, who doesn’t seem to have heard of faith, hope or charity, and certainly doesn’t love his neighbour.

I photographed 20 years of this for a good friend - the basis of a future book, I hope and expect. It was fascinating and reminded me of what a fantastic and largely untapped source unit newsletters can be.

This is why I’m voting Greens, not Labor at this election. Anthony Salmonella more like …

Paul Macpherson on The Sherrin: "... a great read. I was particularly taken by your description of the separate war of the commandos ... I look forward to recommending it to all and sundry." Thank you Paul!

Today Ivan the plasterer came to fix a hole in the wall. While chatting he said that his Dad had been at Kokoda but he didn’t know anything about it. It took me no time to find the NAA files of his father, grandfather and uncle. I can’t fix a hole in a wall, but I can plug another kind of gap #NAA

With a gas reservation policy on ALL gas producers, we’d have instant electricity price reductions. But the major parties won’t do it. They care too much for the gas cartel and consumers in Japan, Sth Korea & Singapore - and not Australians 🤬. #auspol

The AHA expresses its disappointment that recent policy changes at the National Library of Australia have introduced increased restrictions to Trove. It urges the NLA to reverse these policy changes and restore Trove's status as a hallmark of digital accessibility.

Thank you, Hannah. I very much enjoyed my encounter with history buffs in the Bue Mountains- lots of sharp questions and enjoyable exchanges - and meeting up with some old friends. The Blackheath History Forum is an impressive institution.

This evening I had the privilege of moving the vote of thanks to Christina Twomey and Joan Beaumont, who discussed the new edition of Joan’s 1988 Gull Force (on Australian PoWs on Ambon and Hainan 1942-45). Insightful discussion and perceptive questions from the floor. Thank you Colin Steele at ANU.

Yesterday I addressed the active and energetic Blackheath History Forum (iBlue Mountains, NSW) on some issues in current understandings of Australian military history. Very responsive group (if rather reluctant to actually buy books) but an enjoyable encounter with some thoughtful people - thanks!

We mustn’t ‘double down’ on anything! We must, however, emphasise, repeat, reiterate, support or stress these values. Please don’t use vapid Americanisms - and representatives of learned societies have a special responsibility to use our endangered language carefully.

How about the King’s German Legion in the Peninsula and at Waterloo? And the French and Swiss regiments in India and the West Indies during the Mysore wars and the Revolutionary war?

I have a lot of time for local histories and have often used them in my various Australian, British and British-Indian books, not least Terriers in India, which revealed the experiences of men from Wessex and the South of England in India in the Great War. Thank you, British local historians!

Isn’t Kristen lovely! She’s just given me a quick tutorial on Bluesky (but I’ve still got my L plates on). Thanks, Kristen!

I happened to be in Halifax, West Yorkshire, a couple of months ago and was agreeably surprised to find this striking memorial to the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment- is this the newest British war memorial?

Hello Bluesky Having dumped Twitter the day Musk took it over, I’ve finally signed up to Bluesky. I’m a 67-year-old historian living in Canberra, Australia. I write non-fiction history and historical fiction. My new book is Beyond the Broken Years (a history of Australian military history writing.