Watch videos, see a flash presentation, listen to Peter Carey reading an excerpt from True History of the Kelly Gang, performed at the Brisbane Irish Club on 18 October 2000.

"Carey's latest book is bolder and more challenging than anything he has attempted before. ''True History of the Kelly Gang'' isn't merely a historical novel; it's a fully imagined act of historical impersonation..."

"The injustices heaped upon Kelly and those of his class--poor labourers of Irish stock--force the reader into a continuous reappraisal of the ambivalent nature of probity. Can a thief be honest? Is a murderer necessarily evil? The truth of the history is Ned Kelly's truth, and Carey's skill in presenting the outlaw's voice gives moral complexity to the raw stuff of legend..."

"'There will be at least one siren, I promise,' he warns. I am sitting with Peter Carey on the rooftop of the Manhattan apartment he shares with his American wife, theatre director Alison Summers, and their two children..."

"Ned's not just a Jesse James character who robbed banks and upset the establishment," Carey says with a gleam of passion in his eyes. "He's a symbol of national pride and freedom. He's our Thomas Jefferson..."

"NED KELLY has been part of Peter Carey's life for almost longer than he cares to remember. Perhaps it comes from one of his grandfathers who knew Thomas Curnow, the crippled schoolteacher who betrayed the Kelly Gang to the authorities at Glenrowan..."

A fully comprehensive and finely produced Ned Kelly site. Much information and archival material.

Hear the folksong "Edward Kelly" by Lazy Harry and more.

This re-enactment of the trial of Ned Kelly was performed early in 2000. It was a montage of court transcript, Kelly's own words from his Jerilderie letter which the jury never heard, and the reflections of an elderly and ghostly Mr Bindon, who as a grossly inexperienced young barrister, defended Ned.

This is a film study guide produced for teachers. It focuses on the silent film WHEN THE KELLYS WERE OUT released in 1922. (A shortened version was released in England in 1924 as The True Story of the Kelly Gang)

"NED Kelly has always been an embarrassment to me. He is the kind of Irish-Catholic hero the (19th-century) Masons might have made up to humiliate us...Portraying Kelly as the heart and soul of the nation? God forbid. Now a chap with a name like Carey has taken Nedophilia a step further with a regrettably scintillating novel, True History of the Kelly Gang...It was a relief to read commentary on Carey's novel by Cath Keneally (a fine family name) in which she referred to the Kelly gang as "cavorting monsters on horseback..."

"About the trial itself, a few things are clear: Kelly was inadequately represented; the only eye-witness was not adequately challenged; a viable case of self-defence was not properly developed. Kelly did not get a fair trial. About the underlying facts there is more room for dispute. On one view, a fair trial would still have resulted in a conviction. On another view, the defence of self-defence might have been available (although it was not without its difficulties) if it could be shown that the police who went to arrest Kelly were in truth intent on killing him..."