It's Anzac Day, so on this anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli in 1915, I'm appropriately joined by New Zealand playwright and filmmaker and historian too, Arthur Meek.

Arthur's been working on a project to bring to life some of the New Zealand voices of Gallipoli,

a defining moment in their history more than a century ago.

And those voices, I think, are especially important as the New Zealand veterans of the Great War,

like all of them, have faded away, but left us this important legacy.

So welcome to the podcast, Arthur.

Thanks so much, Paul. It's great to be here.

So, I mean, you know, I've had a look at your website associated with this, and I'm familiar

with the book that you've based some of these guys taking their memoirs from.

But tell us a little bit about you, how you came to this and the kind of genesis of this project. Yeah, so it's one of those situations. I am, as you

said, a playwright. I generally work with historical fiction. I've worked with a lot of settler

diaries. I've worked on stuff to do with Charles Darwin and the like.

And usually that involves reading primary and secondary sources, but written things.

I'd always had an interest in World War I, but I happened to be living with my brother,

who was working with Peter Jackson at the time he was making

his wonderful film.

And the book, the house just happened to be full of books on the war.

And it's one of those situations where I didn't so much find voices of Gallipoli as it

kind of found me.

And I read these accounts and they are oral histories, which, you know, your readers will be familiar with,

they had a special gut punch to these things.

They all run at about 12 minutes to speak aloud.

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