In this special summer series of the Afternoon Light podcast you can enjoy the presentations delivered at our November 2025 conference entitled ‘Menzies and the British Commonwealth of Nation’. This third episode features David Furse-Roberts’s paper ‘A Twentieth Century Australian Whig: Robert Menzies and the Nineteenth Century British Liberal Tradition’, Charles Richardson’s paper ‘Menzies, Burkean liberal or Burkean conservative?’, Alex McDermott’s paper ‘When Menzies met Baldwin: Australian and English conservatism, difference and convergence’, & Kit Kowol’s paper ‘Australia in the post-war British Conservative Political Imagination’.

David Furse-Roberts presently works as a speechwriter and researcher for a Federal Senator. He holds a PhD in history from the University of NSW and is the author of God and Menzies (2021). He is also the editor of Howard: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches (2017). Since joining the MRC in 2016, he has written for the ABC, Quadrant, Spectator Australia and other publications on the history and contemporary relevance of liberalism in Australia. This has covered such topics as the founding philosophy of Robert Menzies, the remarkable life of Prime Minister John Gorton and the rich legacy of John Howard. David also comments on topical issues such as free speech and education from a conservative and liberal perspective.

Charles Richardson has a law degree from Melbourne University and a PhD from Rutgers University, specialising in ethics and political philosophy. He has worked in a variety of positions in government and politics, and is a former director of Above Quota Elections Pty Ltd. His work has appeared in numerous publications, and he has been featured as a commentator in newspapers, radio, and television. Since 2012 he has written on world politics at his blog, The World is Not Enough, and does periodic consulting work on electoral matters. His research interests include the history of liberal democratic structures and the comparative study of European party systems.

Alex McDermott is a Curator and Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute. He is an author, historian and Executive Producer. He was Historical Curator for the “Democracy DNA” exhibition (2022) at the Museum of Australian Democracy, authored Australian History For Dummies (2022) and various commissioned histories which explore the crucial role played by civic associations in Australia’s democratic history, such as Of no personal influence: how people of common enterprise unexpectedly shaped Australia (2015) to mark the 175th anniversary of Australian Unity. Across more than two decades as public historian he has contributed his expertise to Screen Australia, State Library of Victoria, La Trobe University, the Institute of Public Affairs, Channel 7, SBS, ABC, Sky News Documentaries, and many other organisations.

Kit Kowol received his DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2014. He subsequently taught at Oxford and at King’s College London where he was an Early Career Development Fellow in Modern British History. His first book, Blue Jerusalem: British Conservatism, Winston Churchill and the Second World War was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. He now lives in Brisbane where he works for the Queensland Government.