Harry Orsman (1928 – 2002) In his fine eulogy at Harry Orsman’s funeral, Stuart Johnston considered the meanings we might take from “character”. He unravelled the word so that it extended far beyond the way we usually use it, and…
Follow the blue Brigid Lowry Allen & Unwin, $19.95, ISBN 186508400X Letters from the Coffin Trenches Ken Catran Random House, $16.95, ISBN 1869415094 The Sleeper Wakes David Hill Puffin, $15.95, ISBN 0141313242 The High Wind Blows David Hill Puffin, $15.95,…
Fantasy and Folly: the lost world of New Zealand musicals 1880-1940 Peter Harcourt Steele Roberts, $39.95, ISBN 1877228656 The dearth of published research on the history of entertainment in New Zealand would be reason enough to welcome the late Peter…
Within the Kiss Charlotte Randall Penguin, $27.95, ISBN 0141006382 When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that reading a novel meant that you had to try to understand what the author wanted to say. If the writing…
The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde Derek Challis and Gloria Rawlinson Auckland University Press, $69.95, ISBN 1869402677 Often the genesis of a biography is as interesting as the work itself. Robin Hyde died in 1939 in London…
Chemistry Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734271 In a 1913 guide book, Forest and Ice, Blanche Baughan describes the Franz Josef glacier: “the grandeur of great, ordained descent, embodied here in a white stairway of the gods, magnificently…