C. E. W. Bean's family moved to England ten years after his birth. On completion of his secondary education, he studied classics at Oxford, graduating with second class honours. After returning to Australia in 1904, Bean worked as a lawyer in New South Wales, an experience which led to his writing 'The Impressions of a New Chum'. Although the manuscript was not published, eight articles containing material from it were printed in the Sydney Morning Herald. Having decided to become a reporter, Bean began working for the Herald in June 1908.
Bean was special correspondent on HMS Powerful, flagship of the of the Royal Navy squadron on the Australian station, about which he wrote a self-published book, The Flagship of the South. Bean was subsequently sent to New South Wales to report on the wool industry, and the resulting series of articles was published in a book, On the Wool Track (1910).
In September 1914, Bean became Australia's official war correspondent, as a result of which he landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, a few hours after the dawn attack had begun. In August he was shot in the leg but stayed at Gallipoli throughout the campaign, continuing to send stories back to Australia.
On Bean's return to Australia in 1919 he moved into Tuggeranong homestead, south of Canberra, and began work on the Official History of Australia in the War 1914-1918. The twelfth and final volume of this seminal work was published in 1942, and in 1946 Bean also produced a single-volume history, ANZAC to Amiens. In 1930 he received an honorary degree from the University of Melbourne.
The opening of the Australian War Memorial on 11 November 1941 saw the realisation of a long-held dream of Bean's. In November 1916 he had suggested to the Australian Minister for Defence that photographs and relics of war should be put on display in a national museum. Bean also urged the systematic collection and preservation of war records, and, in an article in the Commonwealth Gazette in September 1917, described war relics as 'sacred things'. The War Memorial collection came to include 266 of Bean's notebooks, along with letters and diaries dating from November 1914.
During the Second World War, Bean wrote a pamphlet called The Old AIF and the New in 1940 and a book titled War Aims of a Plain Australian. In 1952, he became chairman of the Board of Management of the War Memorial. From 1947 to 1958, Bean chaired the Promotion Appeals Board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and in 1950 wrote a history of Australia's private schools. Towards the end of his life, Bean wrote his last book: Two Men I Knew – a biography of Generals Bridges and Brudenell White.
Source: Australian War Memorial, http://www.awm.gov.au/aboutus/bean.htm, accessed 13th November 2007.
