Settlers: New Zealand Immigrants From England, Ireland and Scotland 1800 to 1945 Jock Phillips and Terry Hearn Auckland University Press, $39.99, ISBN 9781869404017 Over the next few years, our official historians have announced, they will concentrate attention on our immigrant…
Charles Fleming’s Cape Expedition Diary: Auckland Islands, 1942-43 Mary McEwen McEwen Associates, $40.00, ISBN 0473113848 Strange to think that the welcome swallow – a common sight everywhere in the North Island, and absent only in Fiordland and parts of Southland…
The Ship of Dreams: Masculinity in Contemporary Pakeha and Maori Fiction of Aotearoa/New Zealand Alistair Fox Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781877372544 In this academic but engaging study of masculinity in contemporary New Zealand fiction, Alistair Fox of the University…
Mates and Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand Chris Brickell Godwit, $49.99, ISBN 9781869621346 This review comes to you from the backwoods of Ontario. It is a crisp autumn evening. I write this in front of a fire in…
Working With David Michael Bassett Hachette Livre, $59.99, ISBN 9781869710941 Working With David is a dogmatic and humourless book about a man who, even in adversity, revelled in laughter. Beginning with clear praise – “at the peak of his career…
Meeting the ancestors, Peter Wells
A new history of homosexuality prompts Peter Wells to look back on his early life as a gay New Zealander. It’s probably a reflection on the heft of a book that it makes you question your own sense of…
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