Cirrus@Austlit

'Robert Menzies, the son of a sturdy country shopkeeper of Scottish descent, a scholarship boy, a brilliant young barrister, a hand-picked politician of a Melbourne conservative coterie, became the Prime Minister of Australia in 1939. Two years later, he was thrown out of office in what his biographer calls “the most humiliating collapse” in his nation’s political history. After eight years in the wilderness, Menzies led the Liberal Party he had revitalized to the most consequential electoral victory in the history of Australia. He was Prime Minister for the next sixteen years. The Liberal-Country Party…'  (Introduction)