D. Y. Gilbert Napoleon'S History of Australia

Annotation

A foray into historical faction starting with a real-life Englishemigrant, Napoleon Gilbert, ancestor of Ms Gilbert, born in 1799 who immigrated with his family to Tasmania in the late 1820s.This family saga spans five generations, rags to richesand back again, farming and convict labour in Tasmania,butchering meat for Victorian goldminers, Darling Downssquattocracy, Ballarat and Melbourne Architect, genteel Melbourne society, the 1890 crash, Prussian farmers in Ipswich, the First World War, death and poverty in Port Pirie and scandalous unwed motherhood in Adelaide. The connecting thread is the fact that all the Gilbert sons had Napoleon as their middle name, ending the authors father, Melbourne Napoleon Gilbert. It is an entertaining and novel way of writing history, provingthat fact is stranger than fiction. ***