Although a journalist with the British Daily Telegraph, Ashmead-Bartlett applied to accompany the armed forces with the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association representative so that he could supply accounts of the operations to the whole of the London press as well as for numerous other British, European and American newspapers.

Ashmead-Bartlett served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for North Hammersmith in London between 1924 and 1926.

Ashmead-Bartlett continued to write about the Gallipoli campaign, publishing The Uncensored Dardanelles in 1928.

Ashmead-Bartlett’s reports were well received back in Australia, particularly as they were written by a British observer.

Ashmead-Bartlett’s glowing report of the Anzac troops landing at Gallipoli went some way towards the formation of the Anzac legend.

Of the Anzacs, he wrote: ‘They waited neither for orders nor for the boats to reach the beach, but, springing out into the sea, they waded ashore, and, forming some sort of rough line, rushed straight on the flashes of the enemy’s rifles.’