David Day is one of Australia's most respected historians. Apart from Claiming a Continent, which won the prestigious non-fiction award at the 1998 Adelaide Festival, he has written books on Australian-British relations during the Second World War, including Menzies and Churchill at War, The Great Betrayal: Britain, Australia and the Onset of the Pacific War 1939-1942 and Reluctant Nation: Australia and the allied defeat of Japan 1942-45. He has also written a two volume history of the Australian Customs Service.Day's most recent book, John Curtin: A Life was published by HarperCollins to great acclaim in 1999. Barry Jones described it as 'astoundingly good' and 'one of the greatest Australian biographies'. It was short-listed in 2000 for the NSW Premier's Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and won the Queensland Premier's History Prize. He is currently writing a biography of Ben Chifley, which will be published later this year by HarperCollins.
