John Monash
A Biography
Third edition
Foreword by John Rickard
Award-winning biography of one of Australia's greatest men. Completely re-designed and re-set in a handsome new paperback edition.
Awards
The Age Book of the Year 1982
National Book Council Award for Australian Literature 1982
FAW Herb Thomas Literary Award 1982
FAW Wilke Award 1982
Townsville Foundation for Australian Studies Award 1982
About this Title
The man who emerges in these pages is a great man with many faults . . . engrossing reading.
Stuart Macintyre
A major Australian university and a great Victorian freeway are named after Sir John Monash, but many people--especially younger generations--know little about him.
Monash was one of Australia's greatest men, and probably the greatest of its soldiers. The son of Jewish immigrants from Prussia, he graduated from the University of Melbourne in three faculties--Arts, Law and Engineering. He was a man of wide-ranging intellect, and especially devoted to literature, music, theatre, languages and Jewish scholarship.
He achieved fame as a soldier--a citizen-soldier--in World War I. His baptism of fire occurred at Gallipoli, and he was almost the only senior allied general to emerge from the agony of the Western Front with his reputation virtually unspotted.
Before the war, Monash pioneered the Australian use of reinforced concrete, then a revolutionary construction material. On his return, he became the first chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, putting his gift for leadership to harnessing Gippsland's huge brown coal deposits. Monash spent his energies lavishly on the public affairs of his native Australia and placed his immense prestige at the service of many great causes.
Geoffrey Serle's award-winning and best-selling biography of John Monash is much more than a military study. It offers a revealing portrait of a confident leader and public figure, and of an intensely inward-dwelling and sensitive private person.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Name and its Pronunciation
The Family Tree
1 The Focus of his family 1865-1881
2 University Student 1882-1885
3 To What End? 1885-1890
4 The Course of True Love 1888-1891
5 A Rough Passage 1891-1896
6 Little Accomplished 1897-1906
7 Pillar of Society 1906-1914
8 Gallipoli 1914-1915
9 Egypt and Salisbury Plain 1916
10 3rd Division in Action 1917
11 Something to have lived for 1918
12 Feeding the Troops on Victory 1918
13 The Best Man in France?
14 The Blare and Blaze of Fame 1918-1920
15 The State Electricity Commission 1920-1931
16 A National Possession 1920-1929
17 A Very Tired Man 1929-1931
Appendices I-III
Conversions
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Geoffrey Serle was one of Australia's most distinguished historians. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1947 and completed his doctorate at Oxford University. From 1955 to 1963 he taught in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne, where he edited Historical Studies. He became Reader in History at Monash University, and was later a Professorial Fellow at the Australian National University. He was General Editor of several volumes of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and his influential books include The Golden Age, The Rush to be Rich and Robin Boyd: A Life. Dr Serle died in 1998.
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