Historian Dies

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31775, 4 September 1968, Page 11

Historian Dies

(W.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) SYDNEY, September 2. The Australian war historian, Dr Charles Bean, who landed with Australian and New Zealand troops on the first day of action at Gallipoli, has died in hospital, aged 88. Born at Bathurst, New South Wales, the son of a school headmaster, Dr Bean studied at Oxford, where he graduated as master of arts and bachelor of laws in 1903. In World War I he accompanied the Australian Infantry Forces on nearly every battlefield and while in France conceived the idea of an Australian war memorial (later completed in Canberra). Dr Bean returned to Australia and in 1919 was appointed Government Historian and commissioned to write an official history of World War I—a project he completed 23 years later. Dr Bean was the author of several books including “On the Wool Track” first published in 1910 and now accepted as an Australian classic. He was correspondent in London for the "Sydney Morning Herald” from 1910 to 1913.