Search

Publication Date

1965

Place of Publication

London

Book-plate

No

Summary

Dame Enid Lyons’s memoir offers an unembellished retelling of her life as the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and a founding member of the Liberal Party. Enid openly shares how and why her husband, Joseph Lyons, pivoted from Labor to become Prime Minister as a member of the United Australia Party. Enid’s perspective of key events differs from Menzies’s often, but most critically regarding the events surrounding the death of her husband in 1939, an event for which she partially blamed Menzies. Menzies wrote to Dame Enid in 1972 stating ‘two people participating in a series of events can quite honestly come out of the process with entirely different understandings of what has gone on’. Yet, despite these tensions, Dame Enid served Menzies in his government, becoming the first female Member of Federal Cabinet as the Vice-President of the Executive Council from 1949 to 1951.

Edition

First

Number of Pages

283

Publication Info

hardcover