The Waitangi Tribunal/Te Roopu Whakamana i te Tiriti o Waitangi ed Janine Hayward and Nicola R Wheen Bridget Williams Books, $49.95, ISBN 1877242322 State Authority, Indigenous Autonomy: Crown-Maori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa 1900–1950 Richard S Hill Victoria University Press, $39.95,…
Going for the kill There are curious contradictions in Guy Somerset’s editorial, “Review and be damned” (NZB, October 2005). Literary life in New Zealand apparently amounts to “rarefied navel-gazing”, supermarket politeness and authorial complaint, all dire “small-country” traits. Yet these…
Caught Mapping: The Life and Times of New Zealand’s Early Land Surveyors Janet Holm Hazard Press, $49.99, ISBN 1877270865 In 1849, less than a decade after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the assertion of British sovereignty over…
The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall Judith Binney Bridget Williams Books, $49.95, ISBN 1877242330 There are few New Zealand history books that can be described as seminal, that is, books so deep in their research and broad…
Love in Time of War: Letter Writing in the Second World War Deborah Montgomerie Auckland University Press, $35.00, ISBN 1869403363 Freyberg’s War: The Man, the Legend, the Reality Matthew Wright Penguin Books, $35.00, ISBN 0143019856 Western Front: The New Zealand…
Slow readers, Tim Hazledine
Economist and member of the 2000 Heart of the Nation Taskforce on the Arts Tim Hazledine asks if we’re feeding public money to the wrong end of the literary food chain. The New York Times once ran a competition for…
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