This post is part of a series marking Anzac month. For other posts, look under 'News' at the top of our website home page.
Peter Stanley is Defending Country's President and a prolific author of books on military and social history. He also once wrote a radio play and put it in a drawer ...
He writes:
The play, ‘Wanterwrite, Wanterlove: Love & Loss at Tuggeranong’, will be broadcast on ArtSound FM Canberra at 1pm on Anzac Day (listen live on the website). The play dramatises the courtship of Charles and Effie Bean at Tuggeranong homestead, Canberra, in 1920, when Charles was writing the first volume of his official history in the aftermath of the Great War.
I first wrote the play while researching my 2005 book Quinn’s Post, after reading Joan Butler’s memoir of her visits to Tuggeranong in 1920 (it’s in the Mitchell Library). ArtSound advertised for scripts so I dug it out of my bottom drawer.
I hope the play will illuminate the relationship between Bean’s writing (‘Wanterwrite’) and his courtship of Effie (‘Wanterlove’). The title is taken from a letter to Bean from his publisher, George Robertson.
ALSO IN CANBERRA ON ANZAC DAY
Picture credit: Australian War Memorial: Charles and Effie at Tuggeranong 1920
