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Article: A possession for ever: Charles Bean, the ancient Greeks, and military commemoration in Australia.(Report)
- Article from:
- The Australian Journal of Politics and History
- Article date:
- September 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 University of Queensland Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Although this article started life as a paper at a conference on Australian intellectuals and war, I would hesitate to claim Charles Bean as an "intellectual", in the strict sense. (1) He would not have seen himself that way. He grew up in the shadow of a successful and dominant father; in an account he later wrote of his early life, he takes pains to note that his father came second in his class at Clifton College, he himself only seventh; at school he was "never [...] a real scholar". (2) He was (perhaps unnecessarily) self-deprecating about his capacity for hard work, and felt limited at Oxford by his own abilities; his Second Class degree was, he states, "certainly all ...