NZ Biography

Fleur Sullivan is a South Island legend, the culinary maven responsible for not one but two iconic local restaurants - Olivers in Clyde and the eponymous Fleurs Place in Moeraki. Now, at the age of 72, she's running a third, The Loan and Merc in her home town of Oamaru. Her eventful career has spanned more than 40 years, during which time she's transformed two sleepy towns into international destinations. Fleur is brimming with great stories, anecdotes, reminiscences, the conversations had round her table and friendships formed in ... read more

"I love doubters: of a truly honest doubter I have great hope." Printer, botanist and missionary, William Colenso was a nineteenth-century maverick, a true original. He protested at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that Maori did not fully understand its implications. He became a troubled conscience during the white-hot period of colonisation, maintaining his dissident voice throughout his career. Peter Wells refreshes our vision of this awkward, highly talented man, who lost his family after the church expelled him ... read more

Dame Alison Holst holds more titles than her damehood suggests: she's been invariably described as 'Mother of the Nation', 'Queen of the Kitchen' and 'a groundbreaker in the culinary world'. In the sixties, Dame Alison singlehandedly changed the way women prepared food for their families with her legendary television programme 'Here's How'. She went on to become a prodigious fund-raiser for Plunkett, the chocolate-coated voice of radio, author of a hundred bestselling cookbooks, a successful business brand, as well as our favourit... read more

At my worst moments, I lost all sense of hope for the future. As I began to slowly get better, I began to be able to say to myself, 'This will pass, you'll get through this. Hang on to hope.' John Kirwan was one of the most devastating wingers New Zealand, and world, rugby had ever seen. A prominent and revered figure at the dawn of the professional age of rugby, he seemed to live a charmed life. Nobody knew, though, that behind closed doors 'JK' was living a life of tormented fear. Afflicted with depression for many years âÂ... read more

Margaret Pope writes an eyewitness account of the "turbulent 1980s and the brilliant, elusive figure at their political centre". She throws new light on the policy and personalitites of the fourth Labour government.

When Joe Bennett bought a five-pack of 'Made in China' underpants in his local New Zealand hypermarket for $8.59, he wondered who on earth could be making any money, let alone profit, from the exchange. How many processes and middlemen are involved? Where and how are the pants made? And who decides on the absorbent qualities of the gusset?Where Underpants Come From tells you all you need to know - in fact, probably more - about this mystery of global commerce. Leaving his supermarket trolley behind Joe embarks on an odyssey to the ... read more

Frances Hodgkins crossed hemispheres, cultures, epochs and styles. She encouraged young artists and won support from her peers, yet she suffered hurtful dismissals. Art historian Dr Joanne Drayton captures Hodgkins’ life vividly and displays her achievements in context. The result is a beautiful, compelling book that — with its sense of immediacy and intimacy and its full-colour illustrations â€ÂÂÂÂ... read more

Living on the isolated and beautiful D'Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds, Jeanette Aplin writes candidly about the challenges of daily life - no electricity, no roads to the door, a solar-powered computer giving her contact with family and friends elsewhere. Pigs are the focus of this book - this is the story about the adventures and dilemmas which face Jeanette as she raises kunekune pigs. But it is also about other animals, wildlife, and lifestyle - a way of life that is almost lost to New Zealand forever. Her two previous... read more

'It is the desire really to make myself a first person. For many years I was a third person - as children are, 'they', 'she', and as probably oppressed minorities become, 'they'. - Janet Frame, radio interview about writing her autobiography (1983). For the first time ever, this collection brings together Janet Frame's published short non-fiction in one collected volume, as well as material never seen before. Letters spanning 50 years of Frame's life are published alongside essays, reviews, speeches and extracts from interviews. T... read more

Frank Sargeson wrote novels, memoirs and plays and was New Zealand's most important writer of short fiction following the death of Katherine Mansfield. He also encouraged numerous other writers, playing an invaluable role in the rise of our national literature, which he championed both at home and abroad. He was also a prolific letter writer, and this selection of the 500 most fascinating range over numerous topics, capturing his times, his milieu, his preoccupations and life. He loved gossip, could be bitchy and sharp, affec... read more

Ray Avery is an amazing person. He is the current New Zealander of the Year because of his clever work in the third world using his scientific and business knowledge to provide cheap cataract operations, cheap and more effective incubators for babies and other creative scientific solutions. His childhood was very 'Angela's Ashes' - brought up in an orphanage (his own mother had tried to sell him), then ran away and lived on the streets. But Ray went on to become a scientist, a millionaire, very successful businessman and now someon... read more

Around the world Sir Edmund Hillary is a legendary figure - climber, bold adventurer, practical philanthropist and one of the most widely respected persons of our time. He has survived extremes of human experience - from historic triumphs to crushing personal loss - but he sees himself as an ordinary man, persistent rather than heroic.

Mutual kidnapping between the Maori and the English inhabitants in New Zealand had dated back to the 1769s. In 1869, after an English defeat in battle in the Taranaki forest, one more Maori boy, aged five, was captured. This little captive was to be adopted by the prime minister and educated to become a lawyer and an "English gentleman". Photographed, just a few days after his kidnap wearing a fine English suit and boots, the boy stands beside a vase of flowers and a weighty book placed on an abony stand, looking "as if he's seen a... read more

: He features in the International Rugby Board Hall of Fame, the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame, and the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame. He is Sir Wilson Whineray, one of New Zealand's favourite sons, a legendary achiever in both rugby and business. This is the man who had all of Cardiff Arms Park standing, singing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' at the conclusion of the epic All Black tour of 1963-1964. He was a gifted, natural leader who, following his celebrated rugby career, became an iconic business leader, chairing the bo... read more

In 1906, at just 16 years of age, Angelina Criscillo left the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli, off Sicily, to travel to an even remoter island on the other side of the world. From the age of eight she had been betrothed to her cousin, Vincenzo Moleta, who was now twice her age and taking her to a new life on D'Urville Island in New Zealand.Facing the fierce tides and weather of this wild island on the edge of Cook Strait, and having to cope with loneliness, the incessant toil of a pioneer farm, and the bitterness of a develop... read more

Kiwi Beatrice Tinsley became a professor at Yale, and her work on the evolution of galaxies has affected scientific knowledge profoundly â€ÂÂÂ&Ati... read more

Be Mine Tonight, Outlook for Thursday, Loyal, Whaling, Slice of Heaven, Welcome Home - these are only some of the remarkable songs that have framed Dave Dobbyn's long career and made him one of New Zealand's most enduring and best-loved musicians. While generations of New Zealanders have grown up with his music, his songs have never been collected together and published in written form before. Produced to coincide with his new album of greatest hits (to be released in November by Sony Music), Dave Dobbyn: The Songbook will contain ... read more

Rua Kenana was an extraordinary prophetic leader from the Urewera. Resisting threats toexpel the Tühoe people from their ancestral lands, he established a remarkable communityat Maungapohatu, identifying himself as the ‘Míhaia’ or ‘Messiah’ for Túhoe. Judith Binney, Gillian Chaplin and Craig Wallace researched the history of the communityin the 1970s, working frst with a collection of photographs that they took to the Urewera.Sharing these photographs with descendants of Rua and his follow... read more

John Mulgan was part of a gifted yet uneasy group of young New Zealanders who madetheir mark between the wars – men such as Ian Milner, James Bertram, Dan Davin and Geoffrey Cox. An Oxford graduate, he worked as a publisher at Oxford University Press before leaving for the front in World War Two.Fascinated but sometimes troubled by his home country, Mulgan saw New Zealandas a place of challenge and austere demands, a land that produced men more practicalthan cultivated. In his famous novel Man Alone, he depicted it as a tough... read more

Arawata Bill (1865–1947) was a pioneering folk hero. He spent decades in the unforgiving mountain country of New Zealand’s South Island, prospecting for gold and other minerals and making new tracks in unexplored areas. His astonishing feats of endurance and tenacity, coupled with his charming eccentricity, have captured the imagination of generations, and Denis Glover immortalised him in his famous poem, ‘Arawata Bill’. Recently, a Californian Country Rock act have added his story to their ballads.