Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

John Monash

Monash by Grantlee Kieza & Maestro John Monash by Tim Fischer

by •
January-February 2016, no. 378
John Ramsland reviews 'Monash' by Grantlee Kieza and 'Maestro John Monash' by Tim Fischer

While A.J.P. Taylor's famous assessment of John Monash was that he was the sole general of creative originality in World War I, the word 'creative' here is misleading. The real measure of Monash's celebrated genius, as Grantlee Kieza frequently points out in this massive tome, was that he learnt, not without mistakes, how to maximise every tool he was given in an in ...

John Monash: A biography by Geoffrey Serle

by •
November 1982, no. 46
Warren Osmond reviews 'John Monash' by Geoffrey Serle

Poor John Monash has waited a long time. Before he died in 1931, he clearly hoped for a friendly posthumous biography. He destroyed his collection of erotica and some extramarital love letters. This was characteristically called ‘Emergency Action’. Less characteristically, he instructed his son-in-law and executor, Gershon Bennett, not to ‘preserve indefinitely’ the enormous collection of letters, diaries, cuttings, etc.

... (read more)