To hell and back

The book the military censors banned As a young soldier in the battlefields of Gallipoli, Sydney Loch witnessed the horror of war first-hand. On his return to Australia he detailed what he saw in his book, the Straits Impregnable. Hoping to avoid military censorship, his publishers dubbed Sydney's book a novel. But as the war ground on and the numbers of casualties grew, the publisher inserted a note saying the story was factual. the book, which had enjoyed huge literary acclaim, was immediately withdrawn from sale by the censors. Sydney Loch's experiences in the war shaped his life afterwards. With his wife, Joice, he went on to work in refugee camps in Poland and Palestine, and his many subsequent books, set in war-torn countries, reflected his humanitarian beliefs. In to Hell and Back, historians Susanna and Jake de Vries have recovered and edited Sydney's book for a new generation of readers and written a biography of his remarkable life.