Justin Kurzel’s multimillion-dollar movie adaption of Peter Carey’s 2001 Booker Prize-winning novel True History Of The Kelly Gang is to have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September. Kurzel’s movie is neither true nor history. Carey said of his acclaimed book "it’s the most invented, made-up book I've ever written". He should have called it "An Imaginary History of the Kelly Gang".

Ned Kelly in chains, and the armour (right) that kept police guessing as to his identity until Senior Constable John Kelly finally pulled it off.

The publicity blurb for the film reads: "This thrilling, bold adaptation charts the rise and fall of Australia’s original Mad Max; a coming of age tale about a defiant rebel sworn to wreak vengeance and havoc on the British Empire. Set against the badlands of colonial Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned Kelly (George MacKay) discovers he comes from a line of Irish rebels called the Sons of Sieve, an uncompromising army of cross-dressing bandits immortalised for terrorising their oppressors back in Ireland.

"Nurtured by the notorious bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother, Ned Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot one of the most audacious attacks of anarchy and rebellion the country has ever seen."

Well, there you have it. Ned the Aussie rebel hero with a background connection with imaginary cross-dressing Irish bandits, plotting with his wild bunch of warriors to bring down the evil British Empire.

Anarchy and rebellion celebrated by Kurzel and Carey where there was none. Literary imagination and movie fantasy combined to tell a make-believe story unrecognisable to Kelly and his contemporaries.