Author Description

Biographies are usually written about the notable or nefarious. N. Keith Bushell was neither. But he was variously a journalist, a member of the British Radium Expedition, a patrol officer in Papua and the author of a book on Australia - all this before enlisting in the Australian army in 1915 and joining the Gallipoli campaign. Before the war, Keith crammed much into his life. Afterwards, he sought to earn a living as a raconteur. His lifelong habit was to tell journalists of his plans and adventures. But stories about him surviving today in newspaper archives can be unreliable. Keith believed that bending the truth might make for a better tale. In 'Adventurer, Author, Anzac: The Lost Story of Norman Keith Bushell', Ian Ward examines the evidence mapping the life of this Anzac, who sometimes said he was an Australian but had only briefly visited Australia, and who told AIF recruiters that he was a Sydney University medical student but was not. Piece by piece he assembles a picture of a man whose life, cleaved by the Great War, mixed the mundane and memorable.