Political Lives
is an intimate history of image-making and
image-breaking in national politics.
In 2011, Chris Wallace was writing a biography of Julia
Gillard. After seeing the unparalleled onslaught from the
Abbott opposition, she cancelled her contract and repaid
her advance with the awareness of how hard the biography
could hit.
Political Lives
is a result of that fraught experience.
In it Wallace reflects on the roles and motives of biographers
and their biographies in the 20th century.
To discover who wrote biographies, and why, Wallace
interviewed every living 20th century prime minister and
their biographer, from Menzies to Hawke, Whitlam to
Keating. The result is an intimate history of Australian
national politics.