Charles Bean was Australia's greatest and most famous war correspondent. He is the man who told Australia about the horrors of Gallipoli and the Western Front. He is the man who created the Anzac legend. He is the man who was absolutely central to the creation of this country's most important cultural institution, the Australian War Memorial. Yet we know so little about the real man. Bean was not just a key figure in the telling of Australia's military history but also in the shaping of the emerging Australian identity in the years after Federation.