Article Alert: Ned's Last Stand Not a Solo Affair (newspaper review of Ian W. Shaw's new book Glenrowan)

The Australian of March 24, 2012 had an article entitled Ned's Last Stand Not a Solo Affair by Tom Gilling in which Ian W. Shaw's upcoming book Glenrowan: The Legend of Ned Kelly and the Siege that Shaped a Nation is reviewed.


An excerpt:



Shaw does an expert job of depicting the siege not just as the
culmination of Kelly's outlaw career, but as an event that altered the
lives of dozens of ordinary people who happened to be in Glenrowan on
the day the Kelly gang rode into town. He digs deeper than other
authors into the tensions and rivalries that existed among the police
rank and file. In remote country areas law and order rested on the
actions of individual police, so Shaw's meticulous account of what
happened in the police lines as they waited nervously for the final
shootout sheds useful light on some of the broader issues surrounding
Kelly's years as an outlaw.

But it comes at a price. By concentrating, in sometimes pedantic
detail, on exactly who did what, where they stood and what weapon they
were holding, whether they were cowering in the kitchen or the
bedroom, Shaw risks diminishing the very thing that makes the Kelly
story so captivating, namely Kelly. There are times in the book when
he seems almost a peripheral character while his namesake, senior
constable John Kelly, takes centre stage.


The end of the review says:

Literally, Shaw may be right to say that Glenrowan "is about Ned and
Charles and all the others who were there", but this ignores the fact
that without Ned there would have been no Glenrowan. Someone else,
more or less brave than Charles Johnston, could always have been found
to set fire to the inn after Ned had been shot down. The author who
sees no difference between Ned staggering out of the mist in his
inadequate home-made armour and Johnston skulking with his kerosene
and matches has perhaps missed the point of the story.