Time of Hope: Australia 1966-72

100,000 people take to Melbourne's streets in peaceful protest...the public joins the cast on stage to sing 'Let the Sunshine in'...a senior Australian politician sits down in the Great Hall of the People to chat with Chou En-lai...an Australian woman writes a book that changes lives throughout the world - it all happened between 1966 and 1972, a time that was, for many, a time of hope.

When Sir Robert Menzies retired in 1966, the future of Australia seemed certain - it would go on forever as a white, anglo-saxon, primarily protestant, male-dominated, politically apathetic country, committed to 'progress through economic development'.

By 1972, and the beginning of the terms of the first Labor government in 23 years, Australia had seen an Aboriginal embassy on the lawns of parliament house; the emergence of a vision of a 'multicultural future for Australia; the pope holding mass at Randwick racecourse; Germaine Greer; 'sit-ins'; 'freedom rides'; 'gay lib'; 'student power'; 'school power'; 'flower power' and 'green bans'.

Things had certainly changed. Those who approved the changes saw them as the light at the end of the tunnel; those who didn't saw them as the harbingers of doom. But how and why had the changes occurred? Had Australia just sopped up new ideas overflowing from the United States and elsewhere? Had the three interregnum prime ministers led us towards the new Australia or had they themselves been pushed reluctantly along by the pressure of events and new ideas?

Donald Horne examines those times and the questions they pose with the liveliness and insight for which he is renowned and, in doing so, gives us not only a valuable work of social history, but also a vivid re-creation of an unforgettable era.