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Obituary — Jack Body

Harmonious sensuality Ross Harris recalls the life and work of fellow-composer Jack Body (1944-2015) Jack Body was born in the small North Island farming town of Te Aroha to parents with little interest in music. Even so, he was playing

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Posted in Obituaries

Not just bits of cloth, Jennifer Shennan

New Zealand’s Historic Samplers – Our Stitched Stories
Vivien Caughley
David Bateman, $50.00
ISBN 9781869538668

Vivien Caughley’s opening definition of a sampler is “an embroidered cloth which records a stitched pattern, often the alphabet and numerals, sometimes pictures, and stitch techniques … They often commemorate events personal and national.” Through the 160 following pages, we learn much from the intriguing strands of story that Caughley draws from her selection of “self-expression with needle and thread” found in national, regional and private collections throughout the country. We readily concur with her closing ascription of samplers, not as “just bits of cloth” but as “another way history can be studied and illustrated”.

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Behind the footlights, Amanda Lafoy Brown

The Royal New Zealand Ballet at 60 Jennifer Shennan and Anne Rowse (eds) Victoria University Press, $60.00, ISBN 9780864738912 My parents first took me to see the New Zealand Ballet at the Opera House in Wellington in the late 1970s.

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Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review

From Warsaw to Pahiatua, Jennifer Shennan

New Zealand’s First Refugees: Pahiatua’s Polish Children ed Adam Manterys Polish Children’s Reunion Committee, $39.95, ISBN 0476007399 Many New Zealanders know that in 1944 a shipload of orphaned children, refugees from war-torn Poland (732 children and 102 caregivers, to be

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, War

Queen Victoria, dancing monarch, Wendy Pond

A New Most Excellent Dancing Master. The Journal of Joseph Lowe’s visits to Balmoral and Windsor (1852-1860) to teach dance to the family of Queen Victoria Allan Thomas (ed), Pendragon Press, $54.95 It is Boxing Day 1855. Queen Victoria is

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review

The Oceanic heritage, Wendy Pond

Songs and Stories of Tokelau. An introduction to the cultural heritage Allan Thomas, Ineleo Tuia and Judith Huntsman (eds), Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1990, $14.95 (Cassette available from the School of Music. Box 600, Wellington, $8.00) Waiata Maori Songs in history

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Posted in History, Māori, Music, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review
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