Collins Booksellers are delighted to host Paul Byrnes, an experienced and engaging speaker, as he launches his book The Lost Boys – The Untold Stories of the Under-age Soldiers Who Fought in the First World War

As well as being an author, Paul is a film critic for the Age and Sydney Morning Herald and the former director of the Sydney Film Festival. He’s been a journalist for more than 40 years and his book is the product of a lifelong interest in WWI. Paul is a gifted narrator and relates with warmth and poignancy the previously untold stories of the ANZAC kids who lied about their age to fight in WW1.

The Lost Boys is a unique and deeply personal side of history told here for the first time more than one hundred years on. In the First World War of 1914–1918, thousands of boys across Australia and New Zealand lied about their age, forged a parent’s signature and left to fight on the other side of the world. Though some were as young as thirteen, they soon found they could die as well as any man. Like Peter Pan’s lost boys, they have remained forever young.