Painted Histories: Early Maori figurative painting Roger Neich, Auckland University Press, $79.95 One April morning in 1920 the Maori King Te Rata, his kaumatua, a greeting party and 1000 or so Waikato, gathered on the platform at Ngaruawahia railway station…
The Dominion of Signs Nick Perry, Auckland University Press, $34.95 A few weeks ago a debate appeared in the Times Higher Education Supplement which Colin MacCabe (head of research and education at the British Film Institute) and Graham McCann (a…
The Story of Beer: Beer and brewing – a New Zealand History Gordon McLauchlan, Penguin, $39.95 If this book were a swimming pool, you’d break your neck every time you dived into it. Shallow maybe, but it probably achieves all…
Simon Upton’s extended, but muted, cry of anguish (New Zealand Books, December 1994) marks a major intellectual maturing on the part of the New Zealand National Party’s only serious thinker. Had it been written in mid-Victorian Britain one would confidently…
I am sitting in an Auckland dealer gallery pondering some photographs of Michael Smither’s paintings, including one New Plymouth public garden scene called “Poet’s Bridge”, the title of which strikes an encouraging note – there can’t be too many such…
Apology to C K Stead
C K Stead has taken exception to two aspects of a review of The Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories in our issue of March 1994. If Roger Robinson’s review gave readers the impression that the absence of four…
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