Kathleen Fitzpatrick wanted to be an actress. Instead, she became a famous lecturer and teacher in the History Department at the University of Melbourne, and in one of the frequent revealing asides in her memoir implies that perhaps this fact explained her ability as an inspiring lecturer.

I say ‘implies’ because the author is far too decent and modest to assert that her most profound influence on undergraduates probably lay in ability to enthuse her listener, pens poised, washed ears at the alert. It does not matter that many of her audience would not have understood the patrician lecturer’s origins and background. At that level of education it never does.

‘In fifty years’ time,’ Robert Haupt and Michelle Grattan write in 31 Days to Power, ‘historians will look at the 1983 elections, see that inflation, unemployment and interest rates were at high levels compared to the past, and conclude that Fraser could never have won’.

Anxious to know which of these three economic scourges most assisted Bob Hawke and unable to wait for half a century, I sought help in this and three other election books. My expectation of an answer was too high. The chief actors of 4 February, the day of the election announcement, have pushed most others off the historical stage; and fascinated by them, these five skilled authors say little about the decision­makers of 5 March.

I also suspect that some of these writers, knowing of their competitors, were too determined to write books that are different: different not only from the sheaf that appeared after 1975, but from each other. As a result, the obvious was easily overlooked.