John Winston Howard is a man of habit. In retirement, just as when he was prime minister, his days follow a pattern. "I normally get up around half-past six," he says. "Have a cup of tea, go for a walk, do exercises, then have breakfast. And I come into the office each day. I think that's important." No longer having a country to run seems to him no excuse for taking things easy. "Structure and routine. I know it sounds boring, but it's valuable."

At 75, Howard is trim and spry, dressed on this particular weekday morning in much the same way that he has dressed every weekday morning of his adult life: dark suit, white shirt, sensible tie. It is almost seven years since he led his Liberal-National Coalition government to electoral defeat, losing his own seat in the process. But to meet Australia's second-longest-serving PM is to have the strange sensation that time has stood still. The furrowed forehead. The eyebrows. The earnestness. Everything about him is so familiar that you find yourself wondering whether the whole Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott thing really happened or was some sort of fevered dream.

When Howard is out and about, strangers tell him that they wish he were back in charge. "You also get the odd person walking up to you in the street and saying, 'War criminal', " he says as we drink tea in his office suite overlooking Sydney's CBD. "Not very often. I've had about half a dozen of those. They're heavily outweighed by the others."

After losing to Labor in November 2007, Howard deliberately dropped out of view: "I made a speech on election night, said my thanks and congratulations, and resolved then to really stay out of the public spotlight." The way he sees it, former prime ministers should adopt a low profile and keep their opinions to themselves. Mind you, he does provide the occasional word of advice to the current PM, his friend and Liberal protégé, Abbott. "If he asks for it, I give it," says Howard, who might well have told Abbott not to worry about recent polls showing fewer than 40 per cent of Australians approved of his performance. Howard's own popularity rating once dipped so low that the now-defunct Bulletin magazine ran a cover picture of him tagged: "Mr 18 per cent. Why on earth does this man bother?"

That was in December 1988. Howard, who was then the federal opposition leader, had failed to topple Bob Hawke's Labor government in the 1987 election and seemed to almost everyone to have outlived his usefulness, politically speaking. When deposed by his bitter rival Andrew Peacock, he remarked ruefully that in order to resurrect his leadership he would have to be "Lazarus with a triple bypass". Of course, he not only became Liberal leader again but went on to be prime minister for close to 12 years from 1996.

"You need the right temperament," he says of the top job. "You've got to have the capacity to deal with a whole lot of things at once." Howard had that type of mind, if he says so himself. Captaining Team Australia suited him down to the ground. "People ask me, 'Do I miss it?' Of course I do." And he doesn't mean just the obvious perks of office: the wielding of power, the riding in limousines, the hobnobbing with foreign heads of state. He misses the whole business of politics. He represented the northern Sydney electorate of Bennelong in the House of Representatives for 33 years, and relished every moment. "There wasn't any day that I didn't find stimulating and interesting," he says. "A lot were difficult and frustrating and fraught, but I didn't find them oppressive."

He keeps busy with other stuff now. Since leaving parliament, he has produced two hefty books: his autobiography, Lazarus Rising, published in 2010, and The Menzies Era, due for release on Monday. In this latest one, he writes about Australia in the mid-20th century and his hero, Sir Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party.

Howard tells me he met Menzies only once. It was April 1964 and Howard was the 24-year-old president of the NSW Young Liberals, attending the party's federal council meeting in Canberra. Menzies, 69, who had presided over the nation for as long as anyone could remember (he was PM for a record 18 years, starting his first term three months before Howard was born), invited the council delegates to a cocktail party. "There were 40 or 50 of us," Howard says. "We were just in one of the rooms at The Lodge and, ah, he was very big."

Menzies had both height and bulk. "He wasn't as tall as two people who followed him as PM, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser," Howard says. "They were both extremely tall. But he was quite big. And he filled the room metaphorically. It was just a great thrill to meet him."

Howard had been fascinated by politics since boyhood. The youngest son of Mona and Lyall Howard, both staunch Menzies supporters, he grew up in a lower-middle-class Methodist household in the inner south-western Sydney suburb of Earlwood. He studied law, then worked as a solicitor while he plotted his course into parliament. "Howard always had a sense of self-belief," says political analyst Norman Abjorensen, author of John Howard and the Conservative Tradition. "He had a determination, a doggedness, that drove him on."

Compared with, say, Whitlam and Fraser, who weren't just physically imposing but polished and well-connected, Howard had to work hard to impress. He wore glasses, had a hearing-aid (he was born partially deaf) and stood 177 centimetres tall: hardly a runt, but not strapping either. "I wasn't particularly noticeable," is the way he puts it, adding that Bob Hawke, too, was of only average stature.

I say jokingly that Hawke had the advantage of a lot of hair.

"A lot of hair," Howard agrees in a pensive tone. "He's certainly got more than I have. Yes. A lot."

What both Howard and Menzies had in abundance was grit. In the same way that Howard's initial period as opposition leader ended with his ousting by his parliamentary colleagues, Menzies' first stint as prime minister finished prematurely when he was rolled by members of his own party in 1941. "A lot of people completely wrote him off," Howard says, "and a lot of people completely wrote me off. He certainly came back in a big way and stayed for a long time. And Icame back in a big way and stayed for a long time. So there are some parallels there."

Any other similarities? "He was a great orator," Howard says of Menzies. "He didn't read his speeches. Neither did I, in the main."

A great orator? Howard? Norman Abjorensen argues that he lacked the gravitas Menzies brought to a podium. Also, his off-the-cuff remarks couldn't compare with Menzies' for wit and sizzle. Howard's addresses were "unmemorable", says Abjorensen, who believes his plain-speaking style - in fact his all-round plainness - was Howard's most distinguishing characteristic as PM. Since Menzies, Australians had come to expect a little pizazz in their leaders: "Fraser and Whitlam were both very prepossessing men; walked into a room, you'd see them immediately. Bob Hawke was loud. Keating had a certain swagger. Howard had none of that. He was almost the antithesis of our image of a prime minister."

In conversation, Howard is amiable and alert. He cocks his better ear towards you, so as to be sure to hear what you are saying. He considers questions carefully. Answers them thoroughly. The wrinkled brow gives him an expression of permanent concern, yet he has the chipper air of a man who is satisfied with his life's work. "I left a country that was stronger, prouder and more prosperous than it had been when I came to power," he says. "It was certainly stronger economically and also militarily. It was certainly prouder in the sense that the self-worth of the country was greater. And it was certainly more prosperous."

Since leaving office, Howard has increased his own prosperity by joining other fee-charging former world leaders on the international talk circuit. "In the first several years, he was invited to speak in just about every country you could name," says his friend and one-time chief-of-staff, Grahame Morris. "To talk about politics, economic management, all sorts of things." Morris adds that, though Howard criss-crossed the globe in the line of duty, travelling post-politics is very different: "He finally gets to have a look at these places. When you're PM, you go from airport to hotel room to convention centre to meeting room and back to the airport."

Howard and his wife, Janette, who often tours with him, celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary this year. They have three children: Melanie, 40, a lawyer, Tim, 36, who works in digital start-ups in Los Angeles, and Richard, 34, a hedge-fund strategist based in Dallas. When visiting his youngest son, Howard takes the opportunity to get together with his old Texan buddy, former US president George W. Bush. "We normally catch up for a meal or a chat," he says.

Menzies retired voluntarily in 1966. When Howard bowed out in 2007, he had to deal with rejection, not just by the Australian people as a whole but, more personally, by the voters of Bennelong. Senator Arthur Sinodinos, another of his former chiefs-of-staff, was with him at Kirribilli House on election night, and remembers Howard's reaction when the size of the swing against the government started to become clear. "It looked like being about 5 per cent," Sinodinos says. "He turned around to the group of us there, while he was watching the returns, and he said, 'If that's replicated across the country, I'm dead meat.' "

How did he cope with sudden unemployment? "If any politician went from being PM one day to nothing the next, human nature would tell you that would get to you," Grahame Morris says. But Howard insists he suffered no existential crisis: "Look, I didn't like losing. At all. Of course there was a sense of disappointment, I'm not pretending otherwise. But the important thing was to adjust, and I was able to do that." After all, he was 68 and had served four terms in Australia's highest office. "I'd had a long innings."

He and Janette spent a couple of weeks packing up and moving their things from the official prime ministerial residences, Kirribilli House and The Lodge, to the family home in Wollstonecraft, on Sydney's lower north shore. Bought in 1974, the Federation-era house needed some sprucing up. "It hadn't been lived in for almost 12 years," Howard says, "and we had to renew all the electrical goods. The rubber in the washing-machine had perished, things like that."

When he went shopping, he was struck by how much the price of household appliances had fallen since he last looked. "They actually were quite cheap," he says. "It was an interesting re-introduction to normal life."

Researching his new book reminded Howard just how much things have changed since the 1950s. He says he was tickled by a newspaper photograph of Menzies cheerfully smoking a cigarette while opening a British Tobacco factory. In the accompanying article, "he made these comments: 'There's all this talk about it being bad for you. We're smoking more and living longer!' " Howard laughs. "I used to smoke," he says. "I stopped when I was 39, which was good."

Much about life in modern Australia seems to him to be better than in the past. Not necessarily the quality of our national discourse, though. Howard regrets an increasing tendency among politicians to rely on slogans rather than properly explain the case for a particular course of action. "The Australian people are quite savvy," he says. "You should never underestimate their common-sense and intelligence. They have a great capacity not only to see through people who are phoneys, but also to understand and support something, provided it meets two tests.

"The first test is it's got to be in the national interest: they've got to believe it's good for Australia. The second thing is it's got to be fair; not something that imposes a disproportionate burden on one section of the community. If you can satisfy people on those two counts, you can normally, over a period of time, win an argument." I ask if the Abbott government's first budget passes those tests. "I think overall it does," he says cautiously. In his view, Abbott and his team are doing a good job. "They've got challenges, but all new governments have challenges."

As PM, Howard prided himself on his connection with ordinary Australians. Did he wince when the federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, said fuel excise increases would have less effect on poor people because they didn't have cars or didn't drive much? "We've all said silly things on occasion," Howard replies. "We all have lapses." He still kicks himself over his decision to wear a bullet-proof vest when he addressed a hostile pro-gun rally in Victoria in 1996. "I didn't want to do it, but I was new to the job and I thought, 'Well, I'd better take the advice of the security people.' "

His critics would argue that Howard made many more grievous errors of judgement than that one. Following the US into the war in Iraq in 2003, for example. Sidelining Aboriginal reconciliation. Refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions. Demonising asylum seekers. Encouraging jingoism. Introducing industrial relations laws that stripped away all but the most basic of workers' rights.

Norman Abjorensen believes Howard enriched Australia in no other than a purely material way. But credit where it's due. "He was an extraordinarily skilled politician," Abjorensen says. "Possibly even more skilled than Menzies in reading the public mind. He had an innate understanding of what would fly and what wouldn't." Howard was pragmatic. Ruthless. Smart. "He was always one step ahead of the game. He was playing chess in another dimension the whole time."

Former staffers attribute Howard's effectiveness as PM partly to Janette's astute counsel and unceasing support, partly to his own strong work ethic and sense of discipline. His office ran like a well-oiled machine. "We all came in early but there was never a sense of panic," says Arthur Sinodinos. "There was an ordered day."

No matter what was hitting the fan in Canberra, Howard would duck into the parliamentary dining room for half an hour in the middle of the day. "I never believed in missing meals," he says. "People who say they're too busy to have lunch have a false impression of their own importance." He pauses. "I used to sometimes chase up some of my staff to make sure theyhad lunch."

Howard promised to introduce an emissions trading scheme if re-elected in 2007. Even so, he tells me he has never been convinced of the dangers of climate change. Oh, he knows the scientists' predictions are dire, but surely they can come up with a technological solution. "Technology has solved so many things," he says.

Anyway, can we believe the scientists? "I have an instinctive feeling that some of the claims about the planet warming are exaggerated." (Unbidden, an image comes into my mind of Menzies dismissing the risks of smoking.)

Speaking of clever people in white coats, surgery to remove cataracts has dramatically improved Howard's vision. "I still wear reading glasses," he says. "But my long sight is better now than it's been for 40 years." He continues to follow politics avidly - "Former politicians who say they're no longer interested in it are not to be believed" - and holds the Liberal cause as close as ever to his heart. "He raises an enormous amount of money for the party and for candidates behind the scenes," says Grahame Morris.

Howard also supports charities, tries to play golf once a week and was recently named patron of Cricket NSW, having failed in an earlier bid for the vice-presidency of the International Cricket Council. He sleeps soundly at night, as he has always done, and is looking forward to promoting his book. "It's a bit like being back on the campaign trail," he says happily.