Home > Keith Murdoch

Murdoch was born in Melbourne in 1885 and was educated at Camberwell Grammar School and the London School of Economics. After graduation, he began a career in journalism with The Age.

Murdoch applied to become Australia's official war historian upon the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. In the ballot to decide on that position he lost out to Charles Bean.

In August 1915 that Murdoch managed to get permission to visit Anzac Cove, and for the purpose of investigating the alleged mismanagement of mail sent to Australian soldiers serving in the Gallipoli campaign.

Murdoch agreed to hand deliver a letter detailing the mismanagement of the campaign from the British reporter Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett to the British Prime Minister Hebert AsquithHerbert Henry Asquith 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith ( September 12, 1852 February 15, 1928) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. Born in Morley, Yorkshire and educated at the City of London School, he won a schola.

On route to London, Murdoch was arrested by French Military Police in Marseilles and the letter was confiscated. Murdoch made it to London but without the letter so he wrote a replacement to the Australian Prime Minister Andrew FisherAndrew Fisher ( 29 August, 1862 22 October, 1928), Australian politician and fifth Prime Minister of Australia, was born in Crosshouse, a mining village near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire Scotland. He had almost no formal education and worked in the coal-mines f in a similar vein to the Ashmead-Bartlett letter.

It is commonly believed that the letter and the fuss that it created helped bring an end to the Gallipoli campaign.

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See also: The Herald and Weekly Times LtdThe Herald and Weekly Times Limited is a newspaper company in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia that is owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. The Herald and Weekly Times Limited currently publish the morning tabloid daily The Herald Sun wh, Herald SunThe Herald Sun is a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that is published by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. The Herald Sun was formed in 1990 from a merger of the morning tabloid paper The Sun News-Picto