Heather Henderson, ‘He took a great interest in a lot of young ones’ Memories of My Father

At the heart of Robert Menzies’s appeal to the ‘Forgotten People’ was the family, the essential basis of a healthy society. Menzies described the instinct to be with one’s family as ‘the great instinct of civilised man’. This was no mere rhetoric, Menzies was at heart a family man and cherished every moment that he got to spend with his close relatives. They in turn remember him fondly, and can provide insights into the real man that would otherwise remain forever hidden.