AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 251273663663260178.jpg
This image has been sourced from Booktopia
y separately published work icon The Palace Letters single work   prose   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 The Palace Letters
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'What role did the queen play in the governor-general Sir John Kerr's plans to dismiss prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, which unleashed one of the most divisive episodes in Australia's political history? And why weren't we told?

'Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen potentially forever. This ruse has furthered the fiction that the queen and the Palace had no warning of or role in Kerr's actions.

'In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

'Now, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr's archives and her submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the private role of High Court judges, the queen's private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr's actions, and the prior knowledge of the queen and Prince Charles.

'Hocking also reveals the obstruction, intrigue, and duplicity she faced, raising disturbing questions about the role of the National Archives in preventing access to its own historical material and in enforcing royal secrecy over its documents.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication : 'To my mother, Barbara Hocking.'
  • Epigraph : 'Reporter : Do you think the Queen knew about this course of action. 

    Gough Whitlam :  I shouldn't think so, but I don't know. 

    Reporter : Do you think the governor-general took any advice from Buckingham Palace? 

    Gough Whitlam : I don't know. I don't know. I was not informed that he had. - 11 November 1975'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Carlton North, Parkville - Carlton area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria,: Scribe , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 251273663663260178.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Booktopia
      Extent: 265p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 3 November 2020
      ISBN: 9781922310248

Works about this Work

Jenny Hocking V. the Queen Desley Deacon , 2021 single work
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 3 2021; (p. 640-641)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography

'Archives are the meat and drink of the historian. The pursuit through the archives can be tedious and exhausting: ‘Turn every page’, LBJ biographer Robert Caro exhorts. But it is also thrilling – the intense emotion of finding the lock of hair from a long-dead lover or the torn-up shreds of the letters of a discarded husband; or the ‘a-hah’ moment when a scribbled note provides the final piece of a jigsaw you have been carefully putting together.' (Introduction)

The Palace Letters and The Truth of the Palace Letters Frank Bongiorno , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 3 2021; (p. 446-448)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography

'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.'  (Introduction)

The Red Herring Issue of a Head of State Rodney Hall , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 80 no. 1 2021;

'The release of the palace letters has put paid to any comforting assumption that the monarchy is above politics, or that the Queen as Australian head of state guarantees national stability. John Kerr’s correspondence with her private secretary Martin Charteris proved that royal impartiality, when put to the test, revealed itself as merely notional and without substance. Yet the disheartening truth is that this was not greeted with public outrage, which suggests the lesson hasn’t sunk in.' (Introduction)

An Endless Tussle with the Past :Two Different Readings of the Palace Letters Jon Piccini , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 9-10)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography
'In April 2011, the landmark High Court victory of four elderly Kenyans revealed a dark episode in British colonial history. Between 1952 and 1960, barbaric practices, including forced removal and torture, were widely employed against ‘Mau Mau’ rebels, real or imagined. Upon the granting of independence in 1963, thousands of files documenting such atrocities were ‘retained’ by the British authorities, eventually coming to rest in the vast, secret Foreign and Commonwealth Office archives at Hanslope Park. Now a small portion of that archive was opened to scrutiny, and a tiny ray of light shone on one of history’s greatest cover-ups.' (Introduction)
y separately published work icon A Tussle with the Past : Jon Piccini on Two New Books Interrogating the Palace Letters Jon Piccini (presenter), Southbank : Australian Book Review, Inc. , 2020 23440109 2020 single work podcast
An Endless Tussle with the Past :Two Different Readings of the Palace Letters Jon Piccini , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 9-10)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography
'In April 2011, the landmark High Court victory of four elderly Kenyans revealed a dark episode in British colonial history. Between 1952 and 1960, barbaric practices, including forced removal and torture, were widely employed against ‘Mau Mau’ rebels, real or imagined. Upon the granting of independence in 1963, thousands of files documenting such atrocities were ‘retained’ by the British authorities, eventually coming to rest in the vast, secret Foreign and Commonwealth Office archives at Hanslope Park. Now a small portion of that archive was opened to scrutiny, and a tiny ray of light shone on one of history’s greatest cover-ups.' (Introduction)
The Palace Letters and The Truth of the Palace Letters Frank Bongiorno , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 3 2021; (p. 446-448)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography

'The National Archives of Australia has already been busy telling its own story of what happened in the Palace Letters affair. Visitors to an exhibit at its Canberra East Block headquarters will learn that ‘[o]n 14 July 2020 that the National Archives of Australia released, without exemption, a collection of papers known as the “Palace Letters”’. More cryptically, it then refers to ‘a series of court challenges and appeals’.'  (Introduction)

Jenny Hocking V. the Queen Desley Deacon , 2021 single work
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 3 2021; (p. 640-641)

— Review of The Palace Letters Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work prose biography

'Archives are the meat and drink of the historian. The pursuit through the archives can be tedious and exhausting: ‘Turn every page’, LBJ biographer Robert Caro exhorts. But it is also thrilling – the intense emotion of finding the lock of hair from a long-dead lover or the torn-up shreds of the letters of a discarded husband; or the ‘a-hah’ moment when a scribbled note provides the final piece of a jigsaw you have been carefully putting together.' (Introduction)

High Court Ruling on ‘Palace Letters’ Case Paves Way to Learn More about The Dismissal - and Our Constitution Anne Twomey , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 29 May 2020;

'The High Court has ruled that Sir John Kerr’s correspondence with the queen comprises “Commonwealth records”. This means access to them is now in Australian hands and can no longer be vetoed by the private secretary to the queen.' (Publication summary)

The Big Reveal : Jenny Hocking on What the ‘palace Letters’ May Tell Us, Finally, about The Dismissal Jenny Hocking , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: Neos Kosmos , July 2020;

'Forty-five years after they were written, hundreds of previously secret letters between the queen and the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 will be released in full by the National Archives of Australia this morning.'

Kerr’s Curse, the Gough Whitlam Dismissal and the Palace Letters Fotis Kapetopoulos , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: Neos Kosmos , July 2020;

'The release of 211 letters from 1975 to 1976, between the then governor general Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace, after a hard-fought court battle by historian Professor Jenny Hocking, reveal collusion between the Palace and Sir John Kerr in the sacking of a democratically elected Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam.'

y separately published work icon At Her Majesty's Pleasure : Sir John Kerr and the Royal Dismissal Secrets' by Jenny Hocking Jenny Hocking , Southbank : Australian Book Review, Inc. , 2020 20181079 2020 single work podcast criticism

'In 1975 the governor general, John Kerr, removed a democratically elected Labor government, amid great intrigue and subterfuge. The dismissal of the Whitlam government remains one of the blights on our democracy – perhaps the most controversial event in Australian political history. And yet the full record of what happened in the weeks and months leading up to the dismissal is still unavailable to Australian citizens because of the intransigence of Queen Elizabeth and the expensive lengths to which the National Archives of Australia have gone to suppress access to John Kerr’s correspondence with Buckingham Palace.' (Introduction)

The Red Herring Issue of a Head of State Rodney Hall , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 80 no. 1 2021;

'The release of the palace letters has put paid to any comforting assumption that the monarchy is above politics, or that the Queen as Australian head of state guarantees national stability. John Kerr’s correspondence with her private secretary Martin Charteris proved that royal impartiality, when put to the test, revealed itself as merely notional and without substance. Yet the disheartening truth is that this was not greeted with public outrage, which suggests the lesson hasn’t sunk in.' (Introduction)

Last amended 25 Jan 2021 16:06:21
X