Iron in the Blood is jazz musician Jeremy Rose's ambitious and heartfelt tribute to Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore (1986). Although some academic historians may demur, The Fatal Shore remains a crucial book for understanding the brutality of Australia's colonial origins.

To create his eleven-part tribute, Rose has assembled The Earshift Orchestra, an ensemble of seventeen musicians, nearly all of whom are youthful, like the composer. Two accomplished actors, Philip Quast and William Zappa, perform short excerpts from Hughes's book (which are sometimes excerpts from original documents themselves). These are cleverly and movingly integrated into the work as a whole.