The year 1986 sees the National Party reach its half-century – and it is a party which, in the author’s expert opinion, became arguably the best example of a mass-based democratic party in the western world.
In this, the first history of the National Party to be written, Dr Gustafson has mined many fascinating, previously little-known twists and turns in its first fifty years, and casts a revealing new light on its principal personalities.