Pompey Elliott

Ross McMullin

‘When I finished this book I said to my wife ‘I don’t want it to end’ … Australian military history will be different as a result of the publication of this truly excellent biography … an absolute historical tour de force.’

Kim Beazley

‘Ross McMullin has resurrected a national treasure.’

Peter Henning, Launceston Examiner

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‘Ross McMullin argues rightly that an Australian who achieved so much “deserves to be better remembered”. His vivid, thorough biography is the first full account of Elliott’s life — surprising, given Pompey’s eminence, popularity and personality … Elliott's story — the great-hearted captain broken by life’s blows — is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, and our history is the richer for McMullin's telling of it.’

Peter Fuller, Australian Book Review

‘[Pompey Elliott] may be the best Australian military biography yet to appear'.

Stephen Loosley, Sunday Telegraph

’He is tough and tender, cocksure and vulnerable, charismatic and cranky, a burly and ruddy-cheeked man who, once seen, is not to be forgotten … Here is a fine piece of storytelling, a journey back to an Australia that is long gone. Here is a narrative that never stalls but carries us along like a river heading for the sea. Here is Pompey Elliott, bursting out of the page, larger than life and worn down by life.’

Les Carlyon, foreword to the 2008 edition

‘Being a child of parents and grandparents deeply affected by the holocaust and World War II, I have only ever immersed myself in that literature. I’ve been an anti-war campaigner, an active ignorer of Anzac Day, a cynic about jingoism, and an ignoramus about Australian history. However, Ross McMullin’s biography converted me into someone totally gripped by a military tale full of intrigue, politics, love, comradeship, and what it is to be a man, a soldier and an Australian.’

Adjunct Professor Amaryll Perlesz

‘This life of achievement, colour, celebrity and tragedy has been wonderfully re-created by McMullin, whose insight also sets the life into a wider history of its times.’

Peter Ryan, Quadrant

‘For readers interested in military history, and more broadly the society that shaped the first AIF, the book is close to a masterpiece of traditional biography, specific in scope and monumental in structure … McMullin’s book provides a great deal — at 700-odd pages, a great, great deal — to delight in.’

Stephen Matchett, Sydney Institute Quarterly

‘A striking aspect of Ross McMullin’s scrupulous biography is how little Elliott has been exaggerated by posterity … Pompey Elliott is a large book, and rightly. It encompasses a period and individuals of more than mere military significance. It is difficult to dissent from McMullin’s judgment that Fromelles — an engagement not one in a thousand Australians would know of today, because it hasn’t occasioned a movie or mini-series — remains “perhaps the most tragic 24 hours ever experienced by Australians”, its losses being equivalent to the entire Australian casualties of the Boer War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War put together.

‘The assiduous McMullin has scored several scoops, including the revelation that Elliott argues successfully against an appallingly misconceived advance on St Denis Wood shortly after the battle of Mont St Quentin in September 1918 — in the lives preserved, an achievement as considerable as any great battlefield coup.’

Gideon Haigh, The Age

‘In the ultimate sentence of the book McMullin says: “an Australian as famous, inspirational, and historically significant as ‘Pompey’ Elliott deserves to better remembered”. With this book, the first fully researched account of Elliott's life and times, McMullin makes a significant contribution to ensuring that this happens.’

Geoff Pryor, Canberra Times

‘Australians who don’t read this book are short-changing themselves’

Peter Ryan, The Australian

‘Ross McMullin’s biography is an engrossing and capable study of this outstanding figure, who was undoubtedly one of the great Australian characters of the First World War … McMullin is to warmly commended for a major contribution to the body of work documenting this country's military past.’

Chris Coulthard-Clark, Wartime

‘One of the best three or four books ever written by an Australian on the Great War.’

Les Carlyon

‘This is a biography that has been written by an author who knows how to write and structure a gripping yarn.’

Professor Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Pugsley, Australian Historical Studies

Pompey Elliott was a remarkable Australian. During the Great War he was a charismatic, controversial, and outstandingly successful military leader. An accomplished tactician and ‘the bravest of the brave’, he was renowned for never sending anyone anywhere he was not prepared to go himself. As a result, no Australian general was more revered by those he led or more famous outside his own command.

A man of unimpeachable integrity and unwavering commitment, he was also forthright and volatile. His tempestuousness generated a host of anecdotes that amused his men and disconcerted his superiors.

Yet surprisingly little had been written about Elliott until the original edition of this book appeared in 2002. Now in a new format and with a foreword by Les Carlyon, this comprehensive, deeply researched biography tells Elliott’s fascinating story. It vividly examines Elliott’s origins and youth, his peacetime careers as a lawyer and politician, and his achievements — as well as the controversies he aroused during his years as a soldier.

Ross McMullin’s masterly work retrieves a significant Australian from undeserved obscurity. It also judiciously reassesses notable battles he influenced — including the Gallipoli Landing, Lone Pine, Fromelles, Polygon Wood, and Villers-Brettoneux — and illuminates numerous aspects of Australia’s experiences during his lifetime, particularly the often-overlooked period of the aftermath to the Great War.

Kim Beazley

‘Ross McMullin has resurrected a national treasure.’

Peter Henning, Launceston Examiner

View all reviews

Peter Fuller, Australian Book Review

‘[Pompey Elliott] may be the best Australian military biography yet to appear'.

Stephen Loosley, Sunday Telegraph

Les Carlyon, foreword to the 2008 edition

Adjunct Professor Amaryll Perlesz

‘This life of achievement, colour, celebrity and tragedy has been wonderfully re-created by McMullin, whose insight also sets the life into a wider history of its times.’

Peter Ryan, Quadrant

Stephen Matchett, Sydney Institute Quarterly

Gideon Haigh, The Age

Geoff Pryor, Canberra Times

‘Australians who don’t read this book are short-changing themselves’

Peter Ryan, The Australian

Chris Coulthard-Clark, Wartime

‘One of the best three or four books ever written by an Australian on the Great War.’

Les Carlyon

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:736pp

ISBN (13):9781921372018

RRP:$39.99

Pub date:7 Apr 2008

Rights Held: World

High-res cover:Download Image

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AUTHOR

Ross McMullin

Ross McMullin is an award-winning historian, biographer, and storyteller. Life So Full of Promise is his sequel to Farewell, Dear People: biographies of Australia’s lost generation, which won national awards, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. His biographies include Pompey Elliott, which also won multiple awards, and Will Dyson: Australia’s radical genius, and he assembled Elliott’s extraordinary letters in Pompey Elliott at War: in his own words. His political histories comprise The Light on the Hill and So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the world’s first national labour government. During the 1970s he played first-grade district cricket in Melbourne.

Pompey Elliott

Ross McMullin

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