HORNER, David 1948-

PERSONAL: Born 1948; son of Murray Percival (a public servant) and Ruth Bollen (Wilson) Horner; married Sigrid Ingeborg Hill, 1973; children: three. Education: Royal Military College, Duntroon, Australia, Dip.Mil.Stud., 1969; University of New South Wales, M.A. (First Class honors; military history); Australian National University, Ph.D. Religion: "Uniting Church in Australia." Hobbies and other interests: Australian rules football, choir.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Building 6, Fellows Rd., Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia. Agent—c/o Oxford University Press, GPO Box 2784Y, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Military officer, military analyst, and author. Australian Regular Army, retired as a lieutenant colonel, 1990; Vietnam, 1971, platoon commander; various regimental and staff appointments leading to appointment to Directing Staff at the Joint Services College, Australia; Army Reserve colonel, Head of Australian Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre, 1998-2002; Australian National University, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Canberra, professor of Australian Defence History, 1990—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Churchill fellow, 1976; J. G. Crawford prize, Australian National University, for Ph.D. research.

WRITINGS:

Crisis of Command: Australian Generalship and theJapanese Threat, 1941-1943, Australian National University Press (Canberra, Australia), 1978.

(Editor, with Robert O'Neill) New Directions inStrategic Thinking, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 1981.

(Editor, with Robert O'Neill) Australian DefencePolicy for the 1980s, University of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Australia), 1982.

High Command: Australia and Allied Strategy, 1939-1945, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1982.

(Editor and contributor) The Commanders: AustralianMilitary Leadership in the Twentieth Century, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1984.

Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (Canberra, Australia), 1986.

SAS: Phantoms of the Jungle—A History of theAustralian Special Air Service, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1989.

(Editor and contributor) Duty First: The RoyalAustralian Regiment in War and Peace, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1990.

(Editor) Reshaping the Australian Army: Challenges for the 1990s, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (Canberra, Australia), 1991.

General Vasey's War, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, Australia), 1992.

(Editor, with Desmond Ball) Strategic Studies in aChanging World: Global, Regional and Australian Perspectives, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (Canberra, Australia), 1992.

(With Joanna Penglase) When the War Came toAustralia: Memories of the Second World War, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1992.

The Gulf Commitment: The Australian Defence Force'sFirst War, Melbourne University Press (Melbourne, Australia), 1992.

(Editor) The Army and the Future: Land Forces inAustralia and South-East Asia, Directorate of Departmental Publications (Canberra, Australia), 1993.

(Editor) The Battles That Shaped Australia: TheAustralian's Anniversary Essays, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1994.

The Gunners: A History of Australian Artillery, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1995.

(Editor) Armies and Nation-Building: Past Experience—Future Prospects, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (Canberra, Australia), 1995.

Inside the War Cabinet: Directing Australia's War Effort, 1939-1945, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1996.

Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1998.

(With Desmond Ball) Breaking the Codes: Australia'sKGB Network, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 1998.

Defence Supremo: Sir Frederick Schedden and theMaking of Australian Defence Policy, Allen & Unwin (Sydney, Australia), 2000.

The Australian Centenary History of Defence, Volume 4: Making the Australian Defence Force, Oxford University Press (Melbourne, Australia), 2001.

Also author of numerous monographs. Editor of the Australian Army's military history series. Contributor to MacArthur and the American Century: A Reader, edited by William M. Leary, University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A biography of General Sir John Wilton, chairman of the chiefs of staff committee during the Vietnam War.

SIDELIGHTS: David Horner is recognized as an expert on Australian military history with a special interest in operational history, command, intelligence strategy, tactics, current defense issues, and concepts for land operations. He served in the Australian Regular Army for twenty-five years, including active service in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. After leaving the army in 1990, he joined the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and was promoted to full professor in 1999. Horner began analyzing and writing about Australia's military in the 1970s and is the author of numerous books on Australian military history, strategy, and defense.

In General Vasey's War Horner delves into the military career of a little-known Australian general who began his career in 1913 and served in many of Australia's most important encounters, including War World I. Vasey had a natural aptitude for command and was noted for his efforts to improve the lives and conditions of his soldiers. Writing in the Australian Book Review, contributor Ian Buchanan noted, "Before reading this book I had never heard of General Vasey, after reading it I felt as though he was a relative."

In his 1996 book Inside the War Cabinet: Directing Australia's War Effort, 1939-1945, Horner examines the triumphs, mistakes, and conflicts experienced by those who guided Australia's military effort throughout World War II, specifically the Australian War Cabinet and the Advisory War Council. In addition to details about how the war effort was directed, Horner discusses the mechanisms its leaders used in dealing with its enemies and allies. The book takes a close look at some conflicts among the Allied forces, including U.S. General Douglas MacArthur's successful effort to limit Australia's participation in the war against the Japanese in the Pacific. In an article in Air Power History, Herman S. Wolk noted that Horner calls MacArthur "a brilliant political general," who had a major influence on Australia's political-military sphere during the war. Perhaps unusual for such a military book, Horner also includes biographies of the women who served as stenographers during the war. "Horner has done a fine job of showing the roles, mechanisms, and personalities at work during this period of Australia's history," Peter Charles Unsinger wrote in Naval War College Review.

Horner takes on the task of revealing the military and political life of Australia's principal leader during World War II in Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief. Both admired and despised by Australians, Sir Thomas Blamey spent a long career in the Australian military. He was praised for Australia's successes in the Pacific War effort and blamed for almost all of its failures. Calling Horner the "pre-eminent Australian historian of the Second World War" in Australian Book Review, Jeffrey Grey concluded that the book is "intensely readable, signs of Horner's scholarship and talent as an author and of the fascinatingly varied man who is its subject."

In Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network, Horner collaborates with Desmond Ball to take a look at Australia's involvement in the cold war of the 1950s. Specifically, they examine the Petrov Affair, which included allegations of a Soviet spy ring in Australia. The allegations turned out to be mostly untrue, but they helped establish the basis for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), a type of political police organization that helped support the interests of Australia's allies, such as the United States, and Australia's own conservative party. Writing in Australian Book Review, a contributor noted the odd pairing of Horner, a military man who has maintained close ties to the Australian military, and Ball, who was an anti-war protestor during the Vietnam War and who has often written about military intelligence issues that the government hoped to keep secret. The reviewer commented, "These differences are in fact a source of strength and credibility for the book, which touches on some of the most contentious political aspects of Australia's involvement in the Cold War."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Air Power History, winter, 2001, Herman S. Wolk, review of McArthur and the American Century: A Reader, p. 61.

Australian Book Review, July, 1992, Ian Buchanan, review of General Vasey's War, p. 51; December, 1998-January, 1999, Jeffrey Grey, review of Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief, p. 11; July, 1999, review of Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network, p. 11.

Naval War College Review, autumn, 1996, Peter Charles Unsinger, review of Inside the War Cabinet: Directing Australia's War Effort, 1939-1945, pp. 155-156.

ONLINE

Journal of the Australian War Memorial Online,http://www.awm.gov.au/ (April, 1997), John Coates, review of Inside the War Cabinet: Directing Australia's War Effort, 1939-1945.