Life So Full of Promise: further biographies of Australia’s lost generation. Speaker: Ross McMullin

Life So Full of Promise, Ross McMullin’s second multi-biography about Australia’s lost generation of World War I, features a collection of interwoven family stories about forgotten Australians who had radiant potential.

The rich cast of characters includes a popular doctor, an eminent newspaper editor, and a potential prime minister.

A feature of the book is its coverage of cricket and cricketers of the era. It reveals the untold story of a keen all-rounder who was chosen in an Australian team to tour England, but surprisingly did not go. There is also a superb biography of a brilliant yet practically unknown cricketer whose stunning feat has never been matched. Other prominent characters include the most versatile top-level sportsman Australia has ever known, and a Test prospect whose violent postwar death shocked the nation.

Life So Full of Promise recently won The Age Book of the Year Award after being shortlisted for the Nib Literary Award. Its predecessor Farewell Dear People won multiple awards including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History.

About the presenter

Ross McMullin is an award-winning historian, biographer, and storyteller. Life So Full of Promise is his sequel to Farewell, Dear People: biographies of Australia’s lost generation, which won national awards, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. His biographies include Pompey Elliott, which also won multiple awards, and Will Dyson: Australia’s radical genius, and he assembled Elliott’s extraordinary letters in Pompey Elliott at War: in his own words. His political histories comprise The Light on the Hill and So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the world’s first national labour government. During the 1970s he played first-grade district cricket in Melbourne.

The book