Andrew Tink’s superb book tells the story of Australia in the twentieth century, from Federation to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. A century marked by the trauma of war and the despair of the depression, balanced by extraordinary achievements in sport, science and the arts. A country underpinned by a political system that worked most of the time and the emergence of a mainly harmonious society. Australians at the start of the century could hardly have imagined the prosperity enjoyed by their diverse countrymen and women one hundred years later. Tink’s story is driven by people, whether they be prime ministers, soldiers, shop-keepers, singers, footballers or farmers; a mix of men or women, Australian-born, immigrants and Aborigines. He brings the decades to life, writing with empathy, humour and insight to create a narrative that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.

It is 1941. Australia is at war and there are fears of an attack on the homeland. Captain Bobbie Puflett, a doctor serving with the 10th Australian General Hospital of the 8th Division in Malaya, writes to his parents Bob and Ethel and sister Del. When the Allies surrender to the Japanese in February 1942, Bobbie is one of 15,000 men of the 8th Division who disappear. It is eighteen months before his family knows that he is a prisoner of war, but they continue to write. This is one family’s story told through letters. We learn of everyday life in wartime Sydney and service in the allied forces before the fall of Singapore. Most of all the letters bring to life the pain of separation.

In the months following his resignation as PM in late August 1941, Menzies swayed between relief at his release from the burdens of office as PM and despair that his life at the top had come to so little. Many followers of Australian political history, including Liberal party supporters, forget that Robert Menzies had many years in the political wilderness not knowing he would end up being Australia’s longest-serving prime minister. This book focuses on the period between 1941, when Menzies lost the prime-ministership, to 1949, when he regained it. In the interim he travelled around the world, spending an extended time in Britain during World War II, set up the Liberal Party and, the author argues, developed the leadership qualities that made him so successful. Anne Henderson refers to this time as his real political blooding.