"Sir Keith Jacka Holyoake profoundly shaped New Zealand politics in the twentieth century. Born into poverty in 1904, Holyoake left school at the age of twelve and became the country's youngest Member of Parliament in 1932. Over the following half century, Holyoake represented Motueka and Pahiatua for more than forty years, was Prime Minister for over eleven years during the 1960s and Governor-General from 1977 to 1980. Through the Depression, World War II, the post-war economic boom, Vietnam and the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, Keith Holyoake's life paralleled the transformation of New Zealand." "In this biography, Barry Gustafson - the author of bestselling biographies of Robert Muldoon and Michael Joseph Savage - tells the story of Keith Holyoake's life for the first lime. Holyoake, known from an early age as 'Kiwi Keith' or simply 'Kiwi', was a distinctively New Zealand politician, the first Prime Minister to claim abroad that he was not British but a New Zealander. Derided by critics as pompous and unprincipled, a master of consensus and compromise, Holyoake is portrayed by Gustafson as a man with an astute understanding of people and political issues, skilled at defusing division and preserving order while encouraging gradual progress."--BOOK JACKET.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 382-417) and index.