Peter Stanley

Dr Peter Stanley (born 1956) is an Australian historian. He is Head of the Centre for Historical Research at the National Museum of Australia. Between 1980 and 2007 he was an historian and curator at the Australian War Memorial, including as head of the Historical Research Section and Principal Historian from 1987. Having published several books about Australia and the Great War since 2005 (Quinn's Post, Anzac, Gallipoli, Men of Mont St Quentin, Bad Characters and in 2011 Digger Smith and Australia's Great War, with others in train) he can justifiably be regarded as Australia's most prolific Great War historian.

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Biography

Peter Stanley was born in Liverpool, UK, and migrated to Whyalla, South Australia, with his family in 1966. He attended the Australian National University and has three degrees from it, a BA (1977), Litt. B. (1984) and PhD (1993).

Stanley has published over twenty books, mainly in Australian military history, with a strong bent towards social history. He has also written on the military history of British India, and has published a book on British surgery in the final decades of surgery before the introduction of anaesthesia. His writing expresses his concern to integrate operational and social approaches within military history. His historical ventures also include leading the Memorial's Borneo battlefield tour, 1997; Commentator, ABC television broadcast of Anzac Day march, Sydney, 1998–2001; Historical advisor, television series Australians at War (Beyond Productions, 1999–2001); Commentator, Anzac Day national ceremony, Canberra, 2002–06; Leader, Australian War Memorial-Imperial War Museum Joint Study Tour to Crete and Egypt, Sep 2002; Presenter, Revealing Gallipoli, December Films, Apr 2005; Participant, National Summit on History Education, Canberra, Aug 2006; Commentator, ABC television broadcast national ceremony Anzac Day, Canberra, 2007–10. In 2008 he appeared in the documentaries Monash: the Forgotten Anzac and the 4 Corners report on The Great Great History War and Wain Fimeri's recent Charles Bean's Great War. In 2011 he participated in the Shine/Channel 9 series In Their Footsteps as an historical consultant and an on-screen presenter

He has recently been a major participant in a public debate regarding the "Battle for Australia", contesting opinions that events in Darwin in 1942 during the Second World War represented Japan's intention to invade Australia. He argues that the wartime slogan of a 'battle for Australia', used by John Curtin in February 1942 in anticipating invasion by Japan, was taken up in the mid-1990s and applied unjustifiably.

In his work at the National Museum of Australia Peter Stanley is writing a book about the effects of the 2009 bushfires on a small rural community in Victoria, 'Black Saturday at Steels Creek' and will then begin a volume on 'Australia and the Great War' in the 'new Bean' series for Oxford University Press, and part of a chapter in the new Cambridge History of Australia.

Writing as a freelance author in his own time, Peter's most recent book is Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force (Murdoch/Pier 9, Sydney, 2010. A recent book is a novel for children, Simpson's Donkey (Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2011). Future books include Fortitude, a revised popular edition of his 2003 book For Fear of Pain, and Lost Boys of Anzac, a book looking at the men of the 3rd Brigade who died on 25 April 1915. His most recent book, one surveying the Australian experience of the Great War, is told entirely through the lives and words of people called Smith or Schmidt – Digger Smith and Australia's Great War published by Murdoch/Pier 9 in October 2011.

Bad Characters was the joint winner of the 2011 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History.[1]

Publications

Books

Selected articles

References

  1. ^ "Two books share the spoils in 2010-11 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History". Press release. The Hon Peter Garrett MP. http://ministers.deewr.gov.au/garrett/two-books-share-spoils-2010-11-prime-ministers-prize-australian-history. Retrieved 7 December 2011. 

External links