The 1970s may have been a time of flared jeans, paisley shirts and long hair. But the decade was also a time of resistance to such outward signs of modernity and progress. And very briefly, it was also the time of Norman Kirk, who as Labour prime minister between 1972 and 1974 managed to straddle those two New Zealands.
Denis Welch’s We Need To Talk About Norman: New Zealand’s Lost Leader touches on the social mores of that period, but dives deep into Kirk’s significance, now and still. Strictly speaking, the book is neither a biography nor an academic study of political leadership (although it contains healthy servings of both).
