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.