It is unusual for a political leader to figure in the demonology of both the left and the right. Malcolm Fraser bears that distinction. For Labor he was the arrogant Western District squire, trampling on the rights of the workers; the hardline Cold War warrior and the abuser of the constitution. For Liberals he was the leader who denied them their Thatcherite moment in the sun and who, embittered by early retirement, decried their principles and their hero, John Howard. These memoirs are, above all, Fraser’s repudiation of these mythologies. The book is a strange hybrid, Fraser’s response being mediated by the journalist and writer Margaret Simons into a third-person narrative. In modern times, only Charles de Gaulle has dared such effrontery.

A shocking moment for those of leftist persuasion in the Australia of the late twentieth century came in the early hours of 6 March 1983. The hint of a tear on that Easter Island visage, a tremble in that pugnacious jaw: could Malcolm Fraser be human after all? Could this be the hard man from Nareen who preached and practised a rugged individualism – ‘life was not meant to be easy’ – to the poor and downtrodden? Could this be the warmonger, defender and administrator of the Vietnamese intervention? Above all, was this the evil conspirator who, in league with the vice-regal fiend, brought down the beloved Gough, smashing him in successive general elections and driving him from parliament, if not from politics?