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Chris Wallace, ‘Biography as political intervention’ Prime Ministerial Biographers


Robert Menzies had a great dislike for both journalists and biographers. In his memoir Afternoon Light, he decried contemporary history as little more than a ‘gossip column’ which could not be trusted to get the facts right. Nevertheless, early in his second stint as prime minister he reluctantly enlisted a brilliant writer named Allan Dawes to write a biography to help win over the Australian public. While mysterious circumstances ensured that that biography was never released, its story speaks to the great impact that contemporary political biographies can have on the course of real-world events.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to Chris Wallace, author of Political Lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers, about the real-world impact of political biography.

Chris Wallace is a Professor in the School of Politics Economics & Society, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra, and is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU School of History. She works in modern and contemporary political history with special reference to leadership, gender, transnational lives, and transformational change and the information strategies underlying it. Wallace’s latest book is Political Lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers (University of NSW Press, 2023). Her book historicising Australian Labor’s shock 2019 federal election loss, How To Win An Election, was published by NewSouth Books in 2020. Previous books include a biography of maverick Australian feminist Germaine Greer, Greer, Untamed Shrew (Pan Macmillan, 1997; Faber & Faber, 1999); a biography of the then crusading neoliberal policy exponent John Hewson during his Opposition leadership in the early 1990s, Hewson: A Portrait (Pan Macmillan, 1993); and an exploration of the intense 30 year-long relationship between cricketer Don Bradman and his confidante, journalist Rohan Rivett, The Private Don (Allen & Unwin, 2004). She was the National Archives of Australia Cabinet Historian in 2020 and 2021 for the release of the 2000 and 2001 Cabinet papers.

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