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Issue 63 | June 2004

  Volume 14 | Number 2 | Issue 63 | June 2004 Jock Phillips: Michael King – The historian who opened our eyes (essay) Fleur Adcock: “Historian dies in fiery crash” (poem) Editorial Megan Hutching: Susan Jacobs, Fighting with the

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Angels in the meat-grinder, Les Cleveland

While You’re Away: New Zealand Nurses at War 1899-1948 Anna Rogers Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869403010 Nursing might be one of the few remaining professions not entirely driven by greed or self-interest. Anna Rogers assembles a chronicle of service by

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Posted in Health, History, Non-fiction, Review, War

Poem – Fleur Adcock

Historian dies in fiery crash (i.m. Michael King, 1945-2004)   And all our competence in words fails us. When the horror’s beyond exaggeration, go back. Try not to imagine it. But not only “historian”: his wife too – and just when

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The dark night of the decent bloke, Peter Wells

The Scornful Moon Maurice Gee Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018752 Anyone who has heard Maurice Gee read can summon up his tone of voice: discerning, patient and artful. He is a shrewd observer of the human condition with, at times, an

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Their side of the story, Megan Hutching

Fighting with the enemy: New Zealand POWs and the Italian Resistance  Susan Jacobs Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018620 On 10 July 1943 Allied forces attacked Italy, landing in Sicily. Two weeks later the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown in an

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The historian who opened our eyes, Jock Phillips

Michael King I got to know Michael King as a student at Victoria University in the mid-1960s. It was an exciting time. There was marching in the streets, heated late-night discussions over instant coffee. We were getting out from under.

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Editorial – Issue 63

A funny sort of pride This is an unusual issue of New Zealand Books, dominated by the loss of two of our pre-eminent writers. When Janet Frame died in January, we decided to commemorate her achievement in this June issue

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The “Frame effect”, Patrick Evans

The most famous of Janet Frame’s poems is probably the one about the little boy dying of leukaemia, “Yet Another Poem About a Dying Child”, which ends with the appearance of Death as a giant spider which gobbles the child

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A slippery no-man, Owen Marshall

Enduring legacy – Charles Brasch, patron, poet and collector (ed) Donald Kerr University of Otago Press in association with University of Otago Library, $39.95, ISBN 1877276650 Several years ago at a reunion of those who had held Otago University’s Robert

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Poem – C K Stead

Takapuna (Janet Frame 1924-2004)   So, old friend, you’ve come to it at last (Ron Mason’s line, and now an echo of Yeats!). How does it feel to feel nothing? No one will ask you to read, no unmarked sheet

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