Guts and Glory: Diggers, Sport and War

Peter Rees

Dec 2025 · Bolinda · Narrated by Ian Ferrington

Audiobook

8 hr 42 min

Unabridged

Eligible

This book will become available on December 1, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.

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About this audiobook

Sport has always been part of our wars – from the famous cricket match played at Gallipoli as a decoy for the evacuation of Australian troops, to the hero of Tobruk, Changi and the Burma– Thailand railway, Colonel Sir Ernest Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop AC, who so respected his hard-won Wallabies jersey that he insisted on being buried in it, and to legendary Test cricketer Keith Miller, fighter pilot in World War II, who famously said, ‘Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, playing cricket is not'. Featuring vivid, moving, funny, powerful and poignant sporting stories from the wars fought by the Australian Defence Force, ranging from World War I through to the present day, Guts and Glory is about the intrinsic link between sport and war; how sport provides a means for Diggers to cope with the pressures of the battlefield; how the lessons that we learn playing sport can be applied to the arts of leadership and warfare; and how mateship and the Australian spirit can be seen in the way we fight and the way we play.

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About the author

Peter Rees has had a long and acclaimed career both as a journalist covering federal politics and as an author specialising in Australian military history. His books include Anzac Girls; Desert Boys; Lancaster Men; Bearing Witness: The Remarkable Life of Charles Bean; and The Missing Man: From the Outback to Tarakan, the Powerful Story of Len Waters, Australia's First Aboriginal Fighter Pilot. Killing Juanita, about the still unsolved disappearance of heiress, newspaper publisher and anti-development campaigner, won the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for True Crime.

Ian Ferrington is an actor, writer and comedian based in Melbourne. Graduation of Victorian College of the Arts, he has worked on stage and screen, focusing particularly on comedy and new works. He also wrote the book and lyrics for the film noir farce musical the Detective's Handbook, produced by the Hayes Theatre Company.

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