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In addition to Peter Hogan's plagiarism case against Col Stringer,, there's another book that seems a bit suspicious by Jill, Duchess of Hamilton - aka Jill Hamilton (just the name changing implies a tendency to be a chameleon). First (similar to Stringer) she seemed to write mainly garden books. Now she's into the Australian Light Horse. Since her new found success it seems her publisher has put up her own fancy website. Below is an extract from her book promotion webpage about the title under scrutiny, First to Damascus . Many of the keypoints are very similar to Australians of Arabia ...& Lawrence: "First to Damascus The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia (now in third reprinting since publication in March 2002) In 1918, 12,000 Australian Light Horsemen advanced across the Middle East, covering nearly 450 miles of treacherous desert and mountains. After twelve days the Great Ride climaxed in the taking of the fabled city of Damascus. The Ride was praised by the Allies' Chief of Staff Earl Wavell as 'The greatest exploit in the history of horsed cavalry'. Few people today have heard of the Great Ride, let alone remember it as the last triumph using massed cavalry. What most people remember is Lawrence of Arabia's version - that it was this romanticised figure who virtually single-handed led the Arab troops to victory and took Damascus in the name and authority of Arab army chief Prince Feisal. The truth is different. Jill Hamilton tells how Damascus was defended by the same Turkish general who had blocked the Australians at Gallipoli in 1915, and how for many of the troops, the taking of Damascus was a 'getting even' for that defeat. She describes the courage, endurance and mateship that made the desert crossing possible, and pays homage to the deep and important bond between horse and rider that enabled so many men and animals to survive." In the book Hamilton seems careful not to cover the "No ALH = No Israel" theme, which would give it away early if she had seen AOAL. She leaves the mention until the last 2 pages of the Epilogue. Almost as if she is setting up a sequel. Then after this book (just like Stringer) she seems to have found a whole new way to make money. She publishes Gaza to Gallipoli and then finally stops holding back on the juicy Israel theme with God, Guns & Israel - The British, the First World War and the Jews in the Holy Land 1914-1925 It's as if she had planned that book at the beginning all along. In other words First to Damascus - which hardly mentions Israel - is a set up for God, Gun & Israel - where it is revealed as the key theme. This perception is supported by a comment by Michael McKernan in his review of First to Damascus (in the Age exerpted below), where he says, "It is hard to find a strong organising theme." That's because she had to leave it out, to make the plagiarism less obvious. Then make it look like the Israel book is a natural progression. The simple question is: 'How was First to Damascus supposed to be different?'. Other authors had already noted the ALH were first. The other big similarity to AOAL is the selection of the graphic for the front cover. 
It's also funny the way she has played around with the sub-title, seemingly from "The Great Ride and Lawrence of Arabia" to "The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia". Eerily, just like Stringer now uses "...Who Changed the World". And amazingly all 3 of us emphasize having an ancestor involved. Again out of all the Australians that do family history research and find likewise, we three are the only ones who have gone on to come up with the AOAL key themes. Indeed Hamilton seems to really go out of her way by stating on the back cover that her father "inspired her to write this book about the role of the Australians in the Middle East in the First World War." Hamilton appears to be a fair age especially if her father was in WWI - she'd have to be around 60 - sure has taken her along time to get inspired. Seems for most of her life she was more inspired to write garden books. Her biography indicates she's been around the writing / journalist profession, she would be aware of the difficulty of coming up with good ideas for writing that one piece that you can hang your career hat on. (Likewise, Stringer has his relatives prominently featured in the opening pages of his book and again at around 60 took a long time to get inspired.) Michael McKernan's review below compares Hamilton's book with another by Anthony Bruce about the Palestine campaign. McKernan notes how disimilar the two are. Reminds me of how Bruce's is so typical of just about every work on the subject in the last 8 decades, and how miraculously Hamilton's is so similar to AOAL. He also feels that "First to Damascus is a curious book that gives the appearance of being rushed in its preparation". Strange, she is careful to cite a huge number of books in her bibliography to give the impression of a lot of preparation. In other words, it's as if out of the blue (like Stringer) she's had an epiphany, and then found some text to plaster around it, to make it look like original intuition. The Smoking Gun And the Duchess must surely have seen the AOAL monograph because she admits to using the Mitchell Library in her Acknowledgments and when you search Lawrence on that catalogue AOAL comes up at the top because it starts with 'A' (see list below). So considering some of the vague titles she has referenced in her bibliography it's amazing she does not list AOAL And with a name like "Austalians of Arabia ...& Lawrence" how could she resist taking a look at it. She could not admit to probably having seen it, and then dismissing it as irrelevant, because unlike most of the other titles, it contains the majority of her key themes. It's this high likelihood that she saw AOAL at the Mitchell Library (or even on the Internet like Stringer) and subsequent omission from her Bibliography and Acknowledgments, that provides the stongest evidence of plagiarism. A search (exact) by Hamilton at the State Library of NSW on: Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward), 1888-1935. would have brought up the following list with AOAL's enticing title at the top because it starts with 'A'. Subjects (exact) (1-12 of 25) Lawrence T E Thomas Edward 1888 1935 1. Australians Of Arabia ... & Lawrence : A Project Of Australian Descendants Who Respect The Deeds Of / by Peter Hogan. 1998 2. The Desert And The Stars : A Portrait Of T.E. Lawrence. 1956 3. The Golden Warrior : The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia / Lawrence James. 1990 4. Lawrence ... 1910 5. Lawrence Of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry. 1969 6. Lawrence Of Arabia : The Authorized Biography Of T.E. Lawrence / Jeremy Wilson. 1990 7. Lawrence, Prince Of Mecca / by David Roseler. 1929 8. Lawrence : The Uncrowned King Of Arabia / Michael Asher. 1998 9. The Letters Of T. E. Lawrence / selected And Edited By Malcolm Borwn. 1991 10. Life And Times Of Lawrence Of Arabia / by J. Anderson Black. 1996 11. Lur¯ans Malik Al-`Arab Ghayr Al-Mutawaj / ta'l¯if Maykil ¯Ashir ; Tarjamat F¯atimah Nasr. 2000 12. Richard Aldington And Lawrence Of Arabia : A Cautionary Tale / Fred D. Crawford. 1998 History with some Light Horse relief By Michael McKernan Review April 28 2002 First to Damascus: The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia By Jill, Duchess of Hamilton Kangaroo Press, $29.95 The Last Crusade: The Palestine Campaign in the First World War By Anthony Bruce John Murray, $87.50 You cannot move in a bookshop around Anzac Day for the piles of books about war. It is as if publishers, like bakers of hot-cross buns at Easter, think that we will find military history palatable only during one short season. Such a concentration may mean that publishers believe that they simply must have a war book in their lists for Anzac Day. Perhaps they rush to be ready or agree to publish what may need further refinement. We should be wary of all those piles. First to Damascus is a curious book that gives the appearance of being rushed in its preparation. It is hard to find a strong organising theme. This book might have been about the horse in war - certainly there is a great amount of passionate writing on that. Or it might have been about T.E. Lawrence and the riddles of his life that still perplex historians. Or it might have been about the author's father who served with the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East as an under-age soldier. It is about a bit of all of these things and more. Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, writes of a picture of her father taken as a Light Horseman. In the photograph the head of the horse is as important as that of the rider. Take away the horse and the picture is nothing. Her publishers have done just that. There is the picture on the back cover. The soldier might as well have been sitting on a rocking horse for all we see of the animal. And the treatment of the photograph stands for the way this book is presented. It promises what it does not deliver. Following the Light Horse from recruitment to final victory in Damascus, Jill (I'm sorry to sound so familiar but nowhere can I find a surname for the author and the Duchess or Her Grace sounds unpromisingly formal) touches too lightly on topics that deserve and have received much lengthier and weightier examination. I'd hate to have to encompass the Gallipoli campaign in 18 pages as she has done, unless the focus was very strongly on an individual or an issue. There is no focus here. Yet for an absolute newcomer to the story of Australia at war this book might serve as an easy introduction. Not burdened with footnotes or any sense of technical jargon or complexity, Jill tells a great story well. You would think that no one could underwrite the charge at Beersheeba or the dramatic entry of the Australians into Damascus. With a reporter's eye and an apparent true understanding and love of horses, Jill allows those pages to fly. She also reinforces for me the fact that the Australians were first into Damascus, as the Australian official historian, Henry Gullett, conclusively proved in 1923. Less naive and altogether more reliable in a technical historical sense is Anthony Bruce's The Last Crusade. Unlike Jill, Bruce takes a more political/strategic approach to the campaign, which he acknowledges was a sideshow, under-resourced therefore, but always open to victory if either side was prepared to commit the necessary level of troops. At first the British concentrated merely on the protection of the Suez Canal and only in 1917 did they begin to perceive the possibility of victory in Palestine. But that victory would bring its own problems, Bruce explains, because of the inherent deception built into British policy. The Arabs must be partners in the war against the Turks but they must not be allowed to know that the British and the French would decide the post-war future of the Near East. The maps in this book give us names of depressing currency: Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Jenin. While Bruce has mined memoirs and biographies for personal glimpses of the hazards and highs of desert fighting, his command of set pieces is remarkably low-key. For here is a writer prepared to play down the charge at Beersheba, one of the most thrilling moments in 20th-century warfare, allotting it only a couple of paragraphs of the flattest prose. Nor is Bruce, unlike Jill, the slightest bit interested in who was first to Damascus, merely noting that the Australians entered the city as a necessary bypass of the Barada Gorge. Jill gives us a triumphant set piece. These two books, covering identical territory, are remarkably dissimilar, showing how varied in approach history can be. Bruce explores the strategic thinking and military leadership of General Allenby and concentrates on the intellectual challenge that war presents. Jill tells us of the horses and the human impact of war. Horses for courses, I suppose, but neither book is completely satisfying on its own. Michael McKernan is the author of This War Never Ends. Biography: Jill, Duchess of Hamilton God, Guns & Israel (Sutton, UK) is Jill Hamilton sixth book to be published since 2000 in Britain and Australia. Since then she has published Marengo, the Myth of Napoleon’s Horse (Fourth Estate, 2000) which went into paperback in 2001. English Plants for English Gardens (Frances Lincoln, 2000); Redouté's Flowers (Cassell, UK 2001, Hazan France 2001); First to Damascus, the Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia, (Simon & Schuster under their Kangaroo imprint, 2002 -- three printings); From Gallipoli to Gaza, the Desert Poets of World War One (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Thomas Cook the Holidaymaker, (Sutton) is due to be published in January 2005, and Frances Lincoln are publishing her British Native Trees & Shrubs for Gardens which she is co-authoring with Professor Christopher Humphries of the Natural History Museum in March 2005. In the 1990s her books included Scottish Plants for Scottish Gardens, the Stationery Office, 1996; The Flower Chain; The Early Discovery of Australian Garden Plants, Simon & Schuster, 1998. Frances Lincoln published The Gardens of William Morris in 1998, which analyses William Morris’s contribution to garden design and his favourite flowers and plants. She was born in Sydney and first came to England and trained as a newspaper journalist in Sydney under Donald Horne. In 1964 she was sent to London as a correspondent for the Murdoch Press for Australia. Assignments took her to America, India, Russia, Tahiti, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Among the people she interviewed during her career were Nehru, Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Nancy Mitford and P. G. Wodehouse. In November 1963 she attended a dinner for President Kennedy in Miami four nights before he was assassinated. Two years later, when working in Vietnam, she was one of the first women to write about the effects of bombing raids, having flown in a raid from Danang. A passionate campaigner for animal welfare in 1996, after her divorce from the Duke of Hamilton, she wrote Scottish Plants for Scottish Gardens, one of the first popular books to stress the importance of gardeners growing local native flora. Because the book also promoted an awareness of plant animal relationships she was made a vice-president of Butterfly Conservation. Between 1994 and 2001 she expanded this theme in five gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show for which she won various prizes including a silver and silver gilt medal. She is also an active vice president of the RSPCA in Britain. Her experience from working in Vietnam inspired her to set up a shrine to fallen soldiers. In 1995, as no public memorial devoted exclusively to the thousands of Australian troops killed in Europe, Egypt and the Middle East in World War I and World War II had been built in England, she organised an Australian War Memorial at Battersea Park, London, and a dawn service on Anzac Day. This grew each year and after three years was completely taken over by Australia House. Two months after Anzac Day, 1997, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, came to Battersea to lay a wreath and make a speech. He thanked her for bringing the custom of the dawn service to England. There service is now due to be held at Hyde Park Corner. With Penny Hart, Mike Sadka and Professor Chris Humphries she started the charity Flora for Fauna to encourage gardeners to grow native plants to help wildlife. The FFF website, the Postcode Plants Database, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/fff/ continues to be one of the most popular environmental websites in Britain as it allows visitors to enter their postcode and find the plants historically native to that area. Keying in a postcode produces lists of suitable trees and shrubs. For instance if ‘SN10’ is keyed in, the database search engine returns a list of the local native trees and shrubs - and some of the butterflies and birds they support. Four years of research in London, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Turkey have led to her giving three seminars at SOAS, the School of Oriental & African Studies at London University, organized by Professor Haleem, the Director of Islamic Studies. There isn't the strong evidence of plagiarism with Hamilton as there is with Stringer. If she did plagiarize she has been highly skilful in covering her tracks. |
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Hamilton Go to other pages AOA HomePage Stringer AOA v LOA/Defamers Appendix Links: 
Sub-titled: "The Great Ride and Lawrence of Arabia" 
Now sub-titled: "The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia" 
The Original 
Author: Hamilton, Jill Publisher: Kangaroo Press (imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia, a Viacom company) ISBN: 0731810716 Published: 2002 Some online listings: Abbeys Tuxedo (The Great Ride) 
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