Great at Heart

In Great at Heart, war correspondent and historian Gavin Long finally gets the biography he richly deserves.

While Charles Bean is the subject of several major biographies, this is the first life story of his acolyte, war correspondent and editor and principal author of the official history of the Second World War, Gavin Long.

Great at Heart traces Long’s career as a newspaper correspondent during the 1920s and as a defence correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald until the outbreak of war in 1939. The book covers Long’s experiences as a war correspondent attached to the British Expeditionary Force in Europe until the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940 and then with the 2nd AIF in North Africa, the Middle East and Greece.

In 1941, when Charles Bean began advocating for an official history of the war then in progress, he was influential in having his protégé Long appointed General Editor – a role Long discharged with considerable dedication, courage and self- sacrifice between 1943 and 1963, overseeing the development of all 22 volumes and writing three of them himself.