Ross McMullin and Jim Maxwell on war and cricket

Life So Full of Promise, Ross McMullin’s second multi-biography about Australia’s lost generation of World War I and sequel to Farewell, Dear People, features another collection of interwoven stories set in that defining era.

With cricket playing a significant role in some of these stories, Jim Maxwell joins Ross for the discussion. Jim Maxwell has been the ABC’s leading cricket commentator for many years, and is well-known around the world for his expert insights and fluent commentary.

The rich cast in Life So Full of Promise includes a potential prime minister whose outstanding leadership enabled a momentous Australian victory; a brilliant Waverley cricketer who holds a world record yet is unknown; a popular doctor from Wahroonga who was mourned more deeply than any other Australian casualty; the most versatile top-level sportsman Australia has ever known; an admired NSW farmer whose unit was rushed to the rescue in the climax of the conflict; a keen cricketer who was chosen to tour England but did not go; a pair of close sisters who found their lives transformed; an energetic soldiers’ mother who became a political activist and a Red Cross dynamo; and a bohemian Scandinavian blonde who disrupted one of Sydney’s best-known families.

Join Ross and Jim for an in-depth look at the lives and stories in Life so Full of Promise.

This event is presented in association with Action! Film and War, on display until 28 April 2024. This extraordinary exhibition chronicles the use of film in documenting the experiences of war, from before the First World War until today.

Ross McMullin is an award-winning historian and biographer, an acclaimed storyteller, and an entertaining speaker. His book Farewell, Dear People was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History, and his new sequel, Life So Full of Promise: Further Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation, has been shortlisted for the Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award. Ross’s well-known biography, Pompey Elliott, won multiple awards. Another biography, Will Dyson: Australia’s Radical Genius, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. Other books by Ross include The Light on the Hill and Pompey Elliott at War: In His Own Words.

Jim Maxwell is widely admired, in Australia and beyond, as the ABC’s pre-eminent cricket commentator. Joining the ABC in 1973, he has covered various other sports including rugby, hockey and table tennis, but is best known for his radio commentary of cricket. Jim has been Australia’s engaging and authoritative “voice of cricket” for hundreds of Test matches across the decades. He has edited The ABC Cricket Book since 1988, and his books include The Ashes from Bodyline to Waugh: 70 Years of the ABC Cricket Book and his memoir The Sound of Summer.