This is the vivid, charged and emotional letter that changed the course of the Gallipoli campaign. It was published long after Sir Keith Murdoch's death in 1952 and is an inspiring document of the original Anzac fighting spirit.

This edited account was published by British newspaper The Telegraph on April 24, 2015:

“At the end of a hazardous trip to Gallipoli in late 1915, a young Australian journalist named Keith Murdoch - father of media tycoon Rupert - decided he would ignore the military censors and bluntly expose the horrific fate of the campaign and the ‘ghastly bungling’ of the British top brass.

Risking his career in journalism, the 30-year-old proceeded to write a remarkably frank 8000-word letter that is now credited with changing the course of the disastrous campaign.

It was this 25-page dispatch, now known as The Gallipoli Letter, which is believed to have expedited the evacuation from the peninsula and led to the dismissal of General Sir Ian Hamilton, the British commander-in-chief.

After spending four days from September 3 to September 6 witnessing the terrible aftermath of the August offensive, he sent the missive to his friend Andrew Fisher, the Australian prime minister.

Adopting a conversational tone, he famously told the PM that the Gallipoli campaign was “undoubtedly one of the most terrible chapters in our history”.

After the war, Murdoch bought an Adelaide newspaper and proceeded to build an Australian news stable which his son Rupert transformed into a global media empire.

In 1970, Rupert Murdoch donated his father’s letter to the National Library of Australia

The Gallipoli Letter by Keith Murdoch is a 2010 first edition published by Allen & Unwin, Crow’s Nest, NSW, Australia. It is an as-new 98-page 15.5x23cm hard cover with photographs and at the back is a facsimile of the letter.

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