Author(s): Glyn Harper

NZ History/Society | Letters, Correspondence & Dairies

The Gallipoli campaign looms large in New Zealand's cultural memory. For the first time in this book, historian Glyn Harper tells the story of the campaign in the words of the New Zealand soldiers who were there.Having worked through archives in New Zealand and overseas, combed newspapers, and conducted a national call-out to descendents of Gallipoli soldiers, Harper has assembled over 500 letters home, of which 150 will be included in this book, most of them never previously published. After a thorough introduction to New Zealand's involvement in the Gallipoli campaign, the book looks closely at key events - from preparation and landing to the attack on the Daisy Patch, the burial truce, and the seizure of Chunuk Bair - through annotated and illustrated letters. With detailed discussion of the letter writers and what they were experiencing, enhanced by newly commissioned maps and photographs, Glyn Harper's Letters from Gallipoli promises to be a powerful, authoritative, first-person account of this pivotal event in New Zealand's history.