Robert Menzies' forgotten people / Judith Brett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brett, Judith, 1949- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Menzies, Robert, 1894-1978.

Menzies, Robert.

Prime ministers--Australia--Biography.

Prime ministers.

Australia--Social conditions--20th century.

Australia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 pages)

Edition:

New edition.

Place of Publication:

Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Summary:

'Menzies' political self was constructed around a denial of experience and an imagined England filled the void. So too for the people and the country he led.'In 1941, RG Menzies delivered to war-time Australia what was to be his richest, most creative speech, and one of his most influential. 'The Forgotten People' was a direct address to the Australian middle class, the 'people' who would return him to power in 1949 and keep him there until his retirement in 1966.Who were these 'forgotten people'? The middle class pitting their values of hard work and independence against the collectivist ethos of labour? Women shunning the class-based politics of men? The parents of Menzies' childhood in the small country town of Jeparit? Australians struggling to maintain a derivative culture at the edges of the British Empire? Or all of them, in a richly over-determined image that takes us to the heart of Menzies' mid-life political transformation?Judith Brett deftly traces the links between the private and public meanings of Menzies' political language to produce compelling insights into the man and the culture he represented.

Contents:

Intro

ROBERT MENZIES' FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

CONTENTS

CHRONOLOGY

INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION

THE WORDS OF MR MENZIES

I PUBLIC LANGUAGE

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE

Labour and Non-labour

'We Don't Have Classes Here'

Women at Home

The Independent Virtues

THE COMMUNISTS

Ambivalent Commitments

Trouble on the Waterfront

Paranoid Politics

A Fraudulent Document

John Stuart Mill and Lady Macbeth

II PRIVATE LANGUAGE

ENGLAND

An Imagined Place

Centre and Periphery

'My England'

INLAND BORN

Jeparit

Germans and Aborigines

KNOWLEDGE, CULTURE, EXPERIENCE

An Instinctive Conservative

The Sorry Tale of the Royal Academy of Australian Art

Literary Aspirations

A Hollow Man?

FATHERS

Ambitions and Ideals

James and Kate Menzies

A Family Romance

The Men of England

THE ELEVATED SELF

Inferiors

Superiors

The Narcissistic Wound of Colonial Birth

CHURCHILL AND THE MEANING OF 1941

Wartime London

Return and Resignation

Recovery

Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports

CORRESPONDENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books, Articles, Theses

Tape-recordings

INDEX.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780522866940

0522866948

OCLC:

1496392798