University of Queensland Press, 1992

Charles Bean, official war correspondent and official historian of the First World War, has a unique place in Australia's history. Not only did he risk his life walking the battlegrounds with the men of the AIF, but he also observed the fighting first-hand. His awareness of what actually happened at Gallipoli and the Westem Front was unrivalled. His reports on the war were charged with emotion, with harrowing news of death and destruction.

Making the Legend: The War Writings of C. E. W. Bean is an unmatched selection of the best of Bean's six volume Official History, along with some of his diary entries and letters home. Denis Winter's meticulous research and his care and sensitivity, make this single collection the most moving, compelling and compassionate account of Australians at war.

Professor Ken Inglis said of this book,
"This is a remarkable study of Australians at war and an historian at work. It is the product of Denis Winter's vast and intimate knowledge of the First World War, his clear-sighted admiration of Charles Bean and his incomparable mastery of Bean's writing, published and unpublished. He has sifted millions of words, and added sparingly some of his own to make Bean's epic narrative accessible to readers as never before. Making the Legend: The War Writings of C.E.W. Bean deserves to stand alongside Bill Gammage's classic The Broken Years."