To open the Introduction of Challenging Anzac, this important and impressive anthology, editors Mia Martin Hobbs, Joan Beaumont and Carolyn Holbrook quote prime minister Albanese’s 2023 Anzac Day speech. Like many of his predecessors, Albanese’s attendance at these annual ceremonies was obligatory. That says so much about the enduring centrality of Anzac to the national psyche.
Since the book went to press, there was an even more telling illustration. On 21 December 2025, in one of many addresses by the Governor-General following the 14 December Bondi massacre, she noted the previous day was ‘the 110th anniversary commemoration for the withdrawal of the Anzacs from Anzac Cove’ and that they included ‘many 1000s of Jewish Australian soldiers’. In case anyone puzzled over relevance (or felt uneasy about an implied us and them?) she explained ‘we have long drawn on that Anzac story in Gallipoli to help define our national character’, then mentioned again the 1000s of Jewish Australians ‘who enlisted in the First World War [who] sought the peace for us’.
As if on cue, while I drafted this review, there came news of the arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith VC, the disgraced special forces soldier who, as editor Martin Hobbs relates, looked up to the first Anzacs as his heroes and was described by Chris Masters in Flawed Hero (2023) (page 45) as embodying ‘the myth of the classic Anzac, seven-foot-tall and bulletproof’. Former PM John Howard commented, ‘To some Australians, Roberts-Smith is the modern personification of the great Anzac tradition. That tradition is held dearer by our fellow Australians than any other in our proud history.’
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Challenging Anzac presents case studies which, as the subtitle puts it, ‘don’t fit the legend’. It recalls the rationale outlined by Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James in their Introduction to World War One: a History in 100 Stories (2015). It joins a large body of academic writing on the Anzac legend, conveniently surveyed in chapters 29 and 46 of Peter Stanley’s Beyond the Broken Years (2024), and emulates earlier case studies included in The Honest History Book (2017) and Griffith Review’s Enduring Legacies (no 48, 2015). It builds on arguably the original model for their approach, Peter Stanley's Bad Characters (2010).
The span of interest covers 1915-2020s, from the original interpreters and promoters of the legend, including Charles Bean, to contemporary conflicts fought via screens and smart phones. Between the editors’ scene setting opening chapter and Carolyn Holbrook’s finale are twelve studies of individuals and themes.
Understandably because of Anzac’s history, half the chapters link to the First World War. Nathan Hobby reprises the life and suicide of Hugo Throssell VC; Kate Ariotti and Martin Crotty write of Private Nicholas Permakoff, who was shot deserting to the enemy; and Alistar Thomson analyses the recollections of four working class diggers. Others look at collective experiences: John Maynard at the treatment of returned Indigenous soldiers, Margaret Hutchison and Karen Bird at soldier suicides, and Bobbie Oliver at the divided efforts to establish returned soldier organisations in postwar WA.
The second set of chapters begins with Joan Beaumont’s juxtaposing the ‘Rats’ of Tobruk’s role in the siege with their far less hyped relief, while in the penultimate chapter she and co-author Bianca Baggiarini wonder how the Anzac legend’s core values might align when fighting happens not with bayonets but drones. Equally contemporary is Mia Martin Hobbs’ chapter on war crimes, Afghanistan and Ben Roberts-Smith.
Standing alone, though making a powerful contribution to the book’s argument, is Max Billington’s account of the Australian service personnel present at the British nuclear tests in the 1950s.There are two Vietnam-related chapters as well: Christina Twomey’s on the 1977-87 feminist protests against rape in war and the reaction to them; and Mia Martin Hobbs again on veterans’ anti-war activism.
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Challenging Anzac’s chapter authors vary slightly in what they see at the core of the Anzac legend. To Charles Bean, writing in Anzac to Amiens (1946) after 30 years’ reflection: 'Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity,comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat (p 181)'.
Elsewhere he and other journalists, veterans’ groups and politicians stressed ‘sacrifice’. But as the editors note in their opening chapter, there were additional if implied elements. The archetypical Anzac of national memory was ‘a man – and an infantry man at that’ (p 3). And further, Anzac ‘became identified with anti-communism, unquestioning support for the defence forces and, by implication, endorsement of the wars they fought in the name of Australia’ (p 4). From the 1980s, trauma was added, ‘the soldier … increasingly depicted as victim, not killer’ (p 7). Anzac has lasted partly, of course, through its flexibility incorporating new conflicts, circumstances and audiences, and it remains deeply embedded in Australia’s identity and culture.
Would even more stories which did not fit change things? There is no shortage. The editors could easily have found other content and other scholars for a multi-volume series. If I were compiling a further volume, I would limit the editors to only one chapter, if that, invite contributions from at least some of the leading scholars in this field absent from the present volume, and begin with a study of the 40+ per cent of the eligible men who did not enlist during the First World War.
Challenging Anzac’s editors believe ‘the central place of the Anzac legend in Australian society must continue to be challenged’ (p 10). Many will agree, however futile the calls for challenge and regardless of how many copies of such books are sold.
To her credit, one editor, Carolyn Holbrook, argues that scholars must try to understand and explain the legend’s function, developing thinking begun in The Great War: Aftermath and Commemoration (2019). In ‘How Anzac evolved and why it endures – for now’, the book’s final and best chapter, Holbrook presents a reality check to the twelve preceding case studies. Addressing the revelation that certain of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s words were a later invention, she says ‘attempts to counter attachment to the Anzac mythology with empirical evidence misconceived the nature of peoples’ attachment to it’ (p 261). (The historians responsible recognise that, regardless of evidence, some people will be reassured by Atatürk’s words: ‘That is their right; there are plenty of examples in religion and custom where myth persists because it is comforting.’)
Holbrook cites historians, sociologists, anthropologists and particularly evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar to suggest the ritual practices of Anzac underpin a powerful evolving legend. Their perspectives helped ‘understand how the harrowing experience at Gallipoli morphed into a national mythology’ (p 272). The challenges continue.
* Michael Piggott AM is among the distinguished Supporters of Defending Country and a long-time friend of its sister website, Honest History. This review appears also on Honest History.
Picture credit: detail of book cover
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