Murdoch-hating has become something of an international sport. Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, himself spoke angrily last week of the "paranoid Murdoch-bashing" which greeted his corporate effort to buy Manchester United. Don't think this sport isn't played in Murdoch's native Australia, where they love to cut down the "tall poppies".

So it is intriguing to reflect, on the 80th anniversary of the end of the first World War, that this Australian-born American citizen, who made the change to further his corporate ambitions, is the son of the man who engendered much respect, and who did so much to create the self-image which gave Australians an identity - the Anzac.

Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers themselves came to be known as Anzacs, famously after the disastrous expedition to Gallipoli, at the foot of the Turkish Dardanelles, starting in April 1915.

Most people know the story; the dithering in London which delayed the execution of Churchill's master-plan until the Turkish enemy had time to regroup; the totally inhospitable terrain, the rugged rocky cliffs which men were supposed to scale like unencumbered monkeys immediately on leaping, with a heavy pack, from the small boats which delivered them to doom; the stalemate which dragged on for months, affording the troops both the experience of freezing storms and drawn-out baking Turkish summer; and the incompetence of the command.

First at hand to see all this was a young but very able Australian correspondent, Keith Murdoch. As Jay Winter recounts in his book of the Great War, Murdoch was chosen by the horrified contingent of war correspondents witnessing the slaughter to travel to London with a concealed letter to the British War Cabinet, which, it was felt, was not being sufficiently informed of the disastrous progress of the campaign. But Murdoch was stopped by British military before he reached his destination. The letter was found and confiscated.

Then the spirit which newspaper proprietors around the world have experienced, often to their peril, surfaced. Boiling with rage, Murdoch sat down in London and did not rise except to sleep until he had completed a savage, 8,000-word letter, describing the horrors of the Dardanelles. The letter was forwarded to the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. The editor of the London Times, Geoffrey Dawson, heard of its existence and met Murdoch. He was horrified at what he learned. His readers had not been given the benefit of this knowledge, and neither had he.

Murdoch had written: "This was always a hopeless scheme after early May (1915) and no one can understand how Hamilton [Sir Ian, the British commander] persisted with it. . . The work of the general staff in Gallipoli has been deplorable. . . The conceit and complacency of the red-feather men are equalled only by their incapacity. What can you expect of men who have never worked seriously, who have lived for appearance and for social distinction and who are now called upon to conduct a gigantic war?"

The novelist Ion Idriess later described Gallipoli: "Of all the bastards of places this is the greatest bastard in the world." Historian Humphrey McQueen said: "Turks who overheard Australians talking came to believe that they called upon the great god Bastard as Muslims did upon Allah."

Eight thousand Australian and 2,500 New Zealanders died at Gallipoli. Thousands more were wounded, many incapacitated for life. This was the Antipodeans' searing introduction to 20th-century warfare.

They were indeed the flower of their generation, many of them of Irish descent. Perplexed as well as terrified these young men might have been, but they did their best to follow Gen Birdwood's exhortation, when hearing of the impossible nature of the terrain, to "Dig in and fight it out".

Keith Murdoch waxed lyrical about their qualities in his letter to Fisher: "I could pour into your ears so much truth about the grandeur of our Australian army, of the wonderful affection of these fine young soldiers for each other and their homeland, that your Australianism would become the more powerful sentiment than ever before."

Murdoch and his colleagues got some satisfaction when the evacuation of Gallipoli was ordered in December 1915. Gen Ian Hamilton was relieved of his command.

But, as for Turkey, whose brilliant young leader at Gallipoli was Mustafa Kemal, subsequently Ataturk, the "father of the nation", a lasting image had been created on the stony slopes of the Dardanelles.

Australians may today be of more than 100 national descents, but the heritage of the practical, laconic, good-humoured "digger" has gone deep into the collective psyche. Earlier this year the death of the last surviving "Anzac" drew extraordinary recognition, with full military honours at the funeral and an address by the Prime Minister.

Rupert Murdoch's estranged wife, Anna, herself the daughter of an Estonian migrant, is said to have been aghast when her husband decided to renounce his Australian citizenship in 1985. One can only imagine what his father would have thought.