On dangerous ground : a Gallipoli story. Author: Scates, Bruce. Published: 2012

[Steve Sailah]

Historian Bruce Scates has turned novelist in order to weave a compelling drama of love, war, politics and duty around characters whose lives are forever changed by events on Gallipoli.

At the heart of the story, Professor Scates imagines the poignant return of the official war historian Charles Bean four years after the 1915 Anzac landings.

With consummate skill, he switches back and forth in time between a contemporary historian in conflict with bureaucracy, to Bean and his companions' dealings with a Turkish officer, and the love affair between a nurse and an Anzac officer.

This is a tender and informative story told by a master historian whose journey into fiction allows him to go beyond the dry facts of history into an altogether different terrain.