A Coup in Canberra. The Political Assassination of An Australian Prime Minister

A COUP IN CANBERRA tells the story of the political assassination of Sir John Gorton, the 19th Prime Minister of Australia. In office from January 1968 to March 1971, Gorton lost his Prime Ministership when Cabinet Ministers and MPs tossed him out. A former student of elite private schools—Sydney’s Church of England Grammar School, aka Shore, Geelong Grammar and Oxford University—and a decorated fighter pilot in World War Two, Gorton was a patrician who was bred to be a political leader. Instead, he crashed and ended up in the dustbin of his party’s history. The larrikin Prime Minister who was dedicated to reforming the Liberal Party and building a bridgehead between Australia and Asia was out-gunned by powerful forces in Washington and London who wanted to keep Australia as their secret weapon against Asia’s struggle for selfdetermination and national independence.