Harold Holt and the Liberal Imagination

This short book focuses on Harold Holt’s political philosophy and its expression in what I have termed ‘liberal imagination’. It is an attempt to show how a man of genuinely liberal instincts applied his initiative and creativity - the essence of imagination - to a range of political issues and practical challenges during the middle decades of the twentieth century… The life of Harold Holt provides some useful illustrations of political imagination and, later in his career, political stagnation. Notwithstanding the passage of fifty years, there is much to be learned from what Holt did and didn’t do, and why. - From the Introduction