Robert Gordon Menzies

His paternal grandfather, also named Robert Menzies, was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland, and arrived in Melbourne in 1854.

The following year he married Elizabeth Band, the daughter of a cobbler from Fife.

Menzies was proud of his Scottish heritage, and preferred his surname to be pronounced in the traditional Scottish manner rather than as it is spelled.

This gave rise to his nickname "Ming", which was later expanded to "Ming the Merciless" after the comic strip character.

His middle name was given in honour of Charles George Gordon.

The Menzies family had moved to Jeparit, a small Wimmera township, in the year before Robert's birth.

At the 1891 census, the settlement had a population of just 55 people.

His elder siblings had been born in Ballarat, where his father was a locomotive painter at the Phoenix Foundry.

Seeking a new start, he moved the family to Jeparit to take over the general store, which "survived rather than prospered".

During Menzies's childhood, three of his close relatives were elected to parliament.

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (20 December 1894 – 15 May 1978) was an Australian politician and lawyer who served as the 12th prime minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941 and 1949 to 1966.

He held office as the leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) in his first term, and subsequently as the inaugural leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, which he was responsible for establishing and defining in policy and political outreach.

He is the longest-serving prime minister in Australian history.

Menzies studied law at the University of Melbourne and became one of Melbourne's leading lawyers.

Robert Gordon Menzies was born on 20 December 1894 at his parents' home in Jeparit, Victoria.

He was the fourth of five children born to Kate (née Sampson) and James Menzies; he had two elder brothers, an elder sister Isabel, and a younger brother.

Menzies was the first Australian prime minister to have two Australian-born parents: his father was born in Ballarat and his mother in Creswick.

His grandparents on both sides had been drawn to Australia by the Victorian gold rush.

His maternal grandparents were born in Penzance, Cornwall.

He began his formal education in 1899 at the Jeparit State School, a single-teacher one-room school.

When he was about eleven, he and his sister were sent to Ballarat to live with his paternal grandmother; his two older brothers were already living there.

His uncle Hugh was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1902, followed by his father in 1911, while another uncle, Sydney Sampson, was elected to the federal Australian House of Representatives in 1906.

Each of the three represented rural constituencies, and were defeated after a few terms.

Menzies's maternal grandfather John Sampson was active in the trade union movement.

He was the inaugural president of the Creswick Miners' Association, which he co-founded with future Australian Labor Party MP William Spence, and was later prominent in the Amalgamated Miners' Association.

Growing up, Menzies and his siblings "had the normal enjoyments and camaraderies of a small country town".

In 1906, Menzies began attending the Humffray Street State School in Bakery Hill.

The following year, aged 13, he ranked first in the state-wide scholarship examinations.

This feat financed the entirety of his secondary education, which had to be undertaken at private schools, as Victoria did not yet have a system of public secondary schools.

In 1908 and 1909, Menzies attended Grenville College, a small private school in Ballarat Central.

He was Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1932 to 1934, and then transferred to Federal Parliament, subsequently becoming Attorney-General of Australia and Minister for Industry in the government of Joseph Lyons.

In April 1939, following Lyons's death, Menzies was elected leader of the United Australia Party (UAP) and sworn in as Prime Minister.

He authorised Australia's entry into World War II in September 1939, and spent four months in England to participate in meetings of Churchill's war cabinet.

On his return to Australia in August 1941, Menzies found that he had lost the support of his party and consequently resigned as Prime Minister.

He subsequently helped to create the new Liberal Party, and was elected its inaugural leader in August 1945.

At the 1949 federal election, Menzies led the Liberal–Country coalition to victory and returned as prime minister.

His appeal to the home and family, promoted via reassuring radio talks, matched the national zeitgeist as the economy grew and middle-class values prevailed; the Australian Labor Party's support had also been eroded by Cold War scares.

After 1955, his government also received support from the Democratic Labour Party, a breakaway group from the Labor Party.

Menzies won seven consecutive elections during his second term, eventually retiring as prime minister in January 1966.

Despite the failures of his first administration, his government is remembered for its development of Australia's capital city of Canberra, its expanded post-war immigration scheme, emphasis on higher education, and national security policies, which saw Australia contribute troops to the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, and the Vietnam War.