The events on Gallipoli Peninsula almost 100 years ago have been etched in the Australian and New Zealand psyche.

Peter Fitzsimons' new book Gallipoli explains in brilliant detail the background behind the campaign, the facts of the tragic battles, and the continuing legacy that Gallipoli holds for all Australians.

Peter Fitzsimons is Australia's biggest-selling non-fiction author of the last ten years. He recreates the Gallipoli campaign through firsthand accounts of those who survived and perished in Australia's greatest military disaster.

On 25 April 1915, Allied forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in present-day Turkey to secure the sea route between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. After eight months of terrible fighting, they would fail. Turkey regards the victory to this day as a defining moment in its history, a heroic last stand in the defence of the nation's Ottoman Empire. But, counter-intuitively, it would signify something perhaps even greater for the defeated Australians and New Zealanders involved: the birth of their countries' sense of nationhood. 

Now approaching its centenary, the Gallipoli campaign, commemorated each year on Anzac Day, reverberates with importance as the origin and symbol of Australian and New Zealand identity. As such, the facts of the battle - which was minor against the scale of the First World War and cost less than a sixth of the Australian deaths on the Western Front - are often forgotten or obscured. Peter FitzSimons, with his trademark vibrancy and expert melding of writing and research, recreates the disaster as experienced by those who endured it or perished in the attempt.