Happy Dispatches, by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, chronicles Australia's best loved balladeers experiences in the Boer War, 1901 London, the Boxer Rebellion and war-torn Palestine.

He delights the reader constantly with his vivid descriptions of his travels as a War correspondent.

It also includes the author's reminiscences of celebrities such as Churchill, Kipling, "Chinese" Morrison, Lord Roberts and others.

"Banjo" Paterson is probably best known as a poet - author of Waltzing Matilda, The Man From Snowy River and others.

He was also a newspaper correspondent and this collection of articles written around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries is a fascinating description of the trials and tribulations he faced.

He describes how he became a Remount Officer for the British Army in the Boer War (his sole qualification for that post being that he was Australian) and the difficulties of getting to the front in the Russo-Japanese War.

This work makes great reading.

Here is one diary extract:

"November 30th -- At Capetown. Met my first Boer prisoner. He is a doctor, holding an English degree, and can make a fifty break at billiards. Apparently these Boers are at any rate partially civilized. He says that, if the Boers catch our hospital orderlies with rifles in the ambulances, they will be entitled to shoot them. He evidently looks on us as less civilized than his own people. He got hurt in some way during a raid and the British are only keeping him till he is fit to go back."

Happy Dispatches by AB (Banjo) Paterson is subtitled Journalistic Pieces from Banjo Patterson's days as a War Correspondent.

It is a 127-page 21x28.5cm 1980 first edition published by Lansdowne Press, Sydney, and is a large-format hard cover with dust jacket (tear to top back) in good condition.

There are two small inscriptions on page 3.

See our other listings.

Save Konzeptz as a favourite seller.

NB: Combined postage on multiple lots.

BC56561MBk *