‘Ross McMullin is one of Australia’s leading historians. This book shows his skills in so many different ways. He shows himself to be a sympathetic and skilled sports historian. He is also a skilled social historian dealing adeptly with the complexities of family, of community, of love, of boys growing to maturity, of all the arrangements of Australian society in the early years of the twentieth century. He also writes so well about battle, one of the hardest challenges a writer can face … Readers will appreciate the prodigious research [and] will marvel at McMullin’s skill as a writer … Life So Full of Promise is Australian history at its very best.’
Michael McKernan
‘Ross McMullin’s account of those who fought in World War I is a masterpiece of storytelling, weaving family, community, sporting and military history into a satisfying whole … The contrast in family background between Pockley and Callaway is stressed in a paragraph which offers an echo of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities… Life So Full of Promise is a magnificent testament to the sufferings of an age.’
Bernard Whimpress, The Newtown Review of Books
‘McMullin charts these three lives and deaths and their aftermath with extraordinary care and sensitivity. He reconstructs the social and political worlds that each inhabited through detailed descriptions of relationships, passions, and events … The reconstruction of their lives sheds light not just on their special qualities but on so many other aspects of Australian history, from rural development to private education, the role of professions, industrial conflict, politics, religion, and sport. [There are] important insights into the role of women in peacetime families and communities as well as during the war … Ross McMullin is to be commended on another impressive contribution to Australian social history.’
Raelene Frances, Australian Book Review
‘McMullin’s deep and wide-ranging research, together with his ability as a storyteller, ensures his prose sings. We experience on a sensory level Doch Mackay’s trudge through the apocalyptic landscape of the Somme. We also experience Norman Callaway’s early life in the evocation here of prewar Hay. McMullin’s expertise as a district cricketer aids in the clear reconstruction of the matches of entire cricket seasons in passages that devotees of the game’s rich history will find particularly fascinating … McMullin is deft in handling a large cast [and] very effective in providing nuance to our understanding of, for example, reasons for enlistment, and he is especially good at laying bare searing emotional pain … Ultimately, the great power of this work lies in its revelation, at an individual level, of the terrible and profound waste of war.’
Dr Janet Butler, Victorian Historical Journal
‘Ross McMullin has delivered an incredible book, which explores the lives of three extraordinary and talented young men, all with enormous potential … McMullin manages to inject family, social, sport, political and war histories into the mix, which not only makes the work interesting, but is done in such a way that it is an easy read … There are accounts of maiden aunts and their roles within the family and community. We see the three mothers who could not have been more different … What happens to each of these families in the aftermath is just as compelling. This book is all substance and detail, probably the most engaging book I have read. Highly recommended.’
Lesley Smith, The Yorker, journal of the Melbourne Cricket Club
‘What makes this book truly remarkable as a multi-biography is that McMullin goes beyond retelling the three young men’s lives. He interweaves stories about their families, peers and communities, and the legacy of grief and loss felt in Australia during and after the First World War. Life So Full of Promise also features some swashbuckling writing about cricket and how the great game was played in town and city in early twentieth century Australia … What is so affecting about this book is the way in which McMullin painstakingly details the promise of each young man and the scale and commitment of kin, peers and institutions that nurtured their talent, only to see it eviscerated by war … Those who are willing to stay at the crease and watch the ball out of McMullin’s hand are likely to be richly rewarded with a deep reading experience … McMullin should be congratulated for having the courage to write such a densely packed narrative with the prose to match its noble themes.’
Dr Lucas Jordan, The Sydney Papers Online
‘We follow the three subjects’ ancestry, their life and careers prior to their enlistment, their war experience, and the reaction of their families and the wider community to their deaths. The research underpinning each of these topics is prodigious. As we would expect from McMullin’s early books … the writing is crisp, eminently readable and deeply sympathetic … McMullin documents graphically the deep, and lasting, emotional connections that bound the men who went to fight and their families and communities they left behind. The case of Mackay is especially poignant because his correspondence with his adored young wife survived — and is extensively cited. It includes the letter he wrote to her in anticipation of his death … The message of this book remains powerful.’
Professor Joan Beaumont, Australian Historical Studies
‘Ross McMullin’s Life So Full of Promise is an impressive achievement, and a moving portrait of a generation lost to war. A sequel to his acclaimed Farewell, Dear People, it is a prodigiously researched, multi-biography of those affected by the First World War. Through the stories of everyday people, McMullin constructs a fascinating social history of early 20th century Australia, as well as a moving account of the horrors of war. It contains a mass of detail, all of which is compellingly conveyed by McMullin’s lucid and engaging narrative style to very good effect. A major contribution to our understanding of Australia’s past.’
Jeff Popple, Canberra Weekly
‘This long-anticipated sequel to Ross McMullin’s award-winning book, Farewell, Dear People, has been well worth the wait. Meticulously researched and sensitively written, [it features] a tour de force family biographical study, a rare feat in biography genre … The tender love affair played out between Doch and his war bride, Margot, [is] sensitively told … Ross weaves these so personal letters, military despatches, contemporaries’ reminiscences, and Charles Bean’s account of Doch deftly together to make readers understand that this young Bendigonian was a prime example of a man “of remarkable attributes and lost future”.’
Michele Matthews, Pharos
‘What is wonderful about Life So Full of Promise is that Ross McMullin quietly, but with the surety of thorough research, builds a sense of intimacy and connectivity … It’s a peculiar feeling when your own family stories, received as passing remarks or oral fragments, are assembled into a coherent narrative set against nation-building forces … Ross McMullin integrates intimate family dynamics with the wider forces of nation-building that flowed over and through people who are so cleverly drawn that they become us all.’
Simon Pockley, Goodreads
‘Ross McMullin also has a flair for storytelling, and his narrative is of the highest standard … Life So Full of Promise is an excellent book, [suitable for] anyone with an interest in the Golden Age of cricket, certainly in relation to Australia. There is much on the way the game was played and organised in that era at all levels. Those with an interest in military history will enjoy the book as well … Those interested in social history will find the book an interesting read, as well as those with an interest in Australian history up to and including the Great War. For anyone with more than a passing interest in all of those subjects it is an essential purchase.’
Martin Chandler, Cricketweb
