Lady Anne Kerr: From the Rise of International Conference Interpreting to the Whitlam Dismissal

Before Anne Robson (née Taggart) became the second Lady Kerr upon marrying governor‐general John Kerr in 1975, she had an international career of some 30 years working as a French to English interpreter and consultant at over 30 national and international conferences and became the first Australian elected to the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) in 1966. She resigned from the profession and divorced her first husband in 1975 to marry John Kerr and within the year became entangled in the political and national crisis of the Whitlam dismissal, brought on by her new husband, and in which some contemporaries suspected she played a part. Eclipsed by the crisis and largely ignored by historians since, her life and career merit closer scrutiny. They speak to the professionalisation of interpreting services in the post‐Second World War era and to Australia's early endeavours in regional diplomacy. They underscore the critical role of language in facilitating and hindering international relations as well as of the invisibility of the interpreter in diplomatic history. Finally, her story merits closer examination for what it reveals about John Kerr, their relationship, his tenure as governor‐general and particularly his decision to dismiss Whitlam.