Three years after the artist's death, W. A. Sutton: A Retrospective was held to celebrate the opening of the new glass-bright Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, in 2003. Thousands of visitors to the exhibition were bowled over by Bill Sutton's artistic skill and his vision of Canterbury. Bill's Story goes behind the artist to discover the child, the student, the tutor, the citizen, the well-mannered bohemian. The book is derived mainly from Sutton's extensive archives, and from the author's personal knowledge of the artist. We meet his pioneer grandparents, who hailed from England and Northern Ireland, and his parents and brother in their modest family home in Sydenham, Christchurch. Pat Unger portrays an attentive son, a steadfast friend and erudite academic, a resolute administrator and a multi-skilled professional artist. First published March 2008.

Pages: 252

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Pages: 200

Pages: 320

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2012

Historian, biographer, novelist, broadcaster, lecturer and international singer Edmund Bohan is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Edward Stafford, James Edward FitzGerald and Sir George Grey; the general histories of New Zealand: The Story So Far and Climates of War: Conflicts in New Zealand 1859-1869; and the O'Rorke series of historical novels. The Stafford and Grey biographies were Montana Book Award finalists. During his long singing career - much of it based in Britain - he sang more than 170 different major choral, operatic and orchestral works, and broadcast regularly. This light-hearted memoir, richly anecdotal and enlivened with pen-portraits of memorable personalities - musical, literary and academic - chronicles with wit and a sharply observant eye a lifetime of achievement as singer and writer. Following childhood in wartime Invercargill inside a close-knit family, he enjoyed schooldays at Christchurch Boys' High School and defining years at Canterbury University. After teaching for a period he left for Sydney and then London, establishing a career as a versatile 'general practitioner' of singing, mainly in concerts but enjoying memorable times with Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group and Kent Opera. A tour home with the NZSO prompted a permanent return as the end of 1987, where he resumed his 19th-century studies. He has concentrated on writing since then; though he continued to play character roles for Canterbury Opera, Wellington City Opera and the State Opera of South Australia for another dozen years. A dedicated family man, he now tends his Opawa garden - and plans new projects.

Pages: 228

Publication Date: 01-06-2012

Robbie Paul was Super League's first superstar, a player who transformed the sport with his brilliance on the pitch and larger than life persona off it. He was the inspirational heart of a Bradford team who dominated rugby league's new summer era, with Paul the face and driving force of the Bulls for more than a decade.
He arrived from New Zealand as a skinny 18-year-old and developed into a world class talent who took Wembley by storm when he became the first player to score a hat-trick of tries there in a Challenge Cup final. It was the launch pad for a career that included a cross-code move to Harlequins as rugby union went professional, more than 30 league appearances for his beloved Kiwis and captaining Bradford to Super League and World Club title honours.
Artist, musician, media commentator, Paul was no ordinary rugby player. Born of a proud warrior race, his inspirational journey through the trials, tribulations and triumphs of a trophy-laden career is the very essence of the joy of rugby.
Paul's compelling story in his long-awaited autobiography is embellished by his own unique High Performance guide on what it takes to be a better player, mentally, physically and professionally, based on his 18-year playing career and rugby marketing and strategic role today.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 254

Dimensions: 160 x 240 x 24 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2012

'They have been the signposts at crucial turnings in my life.\nSo writes author David Edelsten as he looks back on the horses he has owned or ridden throughout the years, as a shy and awkward boy, a young soldier, for pleasure or for work as a sporting journalist for Country Life, The Field, and Horse Hound.\n\nNo sentimental account, this; David writes with concise and delicate understatement as he records the important moments, big and small, where his horses have played their part in his world.\n\nIt is a personal account, but it will strike a chord with all who have shared a genuine, give-and-take partnership with a horse which has influenced their lives for the better in some unforgettable way.

Pages: 127

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2011

Born next-door to a pub in 1940, Frank Priestley went on to spend a life steeped in brewing, drinking and the enjoyment of beer. From a young apprentice, he worked his way up to become a master brewer at the famous Castle Eden brewery. Frank shares with the reader his fascination for the way brewing is done, and he weaves in anecdotes about his diverse colleagues, his skilled working life and the unique beers that the individual breweries produced. His tale covers the years from 1959 to 1979 and he left when the traditional brewing industry in Britain reached one of its lowest ebbs. But Frank is now delighted to see the revival of interest in good beer and he ends the book with a brief round-up of some of the best pubs in England where he has had the pleasure of drinking a pint. His story is informative, lively and heart-warming.

This compelling biography of lady Barker is a fascinating account of a Victorian woman who, through the course of her life, lived in England, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Mauritius, Australia and Trinidad. Momentous historical events of the period, such as the Indian Mutiny (Revolt) and the Zulu Wars, all directly impacted upon her personal life and resulted in huge domestic upheavals.
Lady Barker wrote 18 books, and is perhaps best known for "Station Life in New Zealand", which was republished by Vintage in 2000.
The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, published here for the first time in paperback, is a full account of the rich and turbulent life of this extraordinary woman.

Pages: 312

Dimensions: 152 x 228 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2009

In the 80 years since veteran journalist and broadcaster Eric Beardsley arrived in Christchurch from the West Coast, he has lived a full and varied life and devoted much time to observing the Canterbury scene, its people, politics, conflicts and progress. The result is Sliding Down the Hypotenuse, an eclectic and wholly delightful mix of memoir, biography and history. Beardsley gives a breezy account of a satisfyingly free-range childhood spent in the wasteland of sandhills and scrub that was Aranui in the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the miserable Great Depression days of the 1930s. His is a story of distant and different schooldays when strap and cane ruled, where the Sugarbag Years dominated the lives of the workless poor, and of a career as night messenger, reporter, sub-editor and leader writer at the Press - work that did not always sit comfortably with his more radical outlook on life. As information officer for the University of Canterbury, he slipped readily into academic life for nearly a quarter of a century and used his journalistic skills to tell the university's story both to itself and to the city and province as it expanded into the spacious new Ilam campus, and began to turn from being a teaching to a learning institution intent on research. Superbly written and rich in humour and piquant, punchy observation, Sliding Down the Hypotenuse will bring lasting pleasure in its vivid portrait of a life well lived, of a province and its university, and of New Zealand over the last eight decades.

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 152 x 228 mm

Publication Date: 01-07-2011

Writer and activist Elsie Locke was a remarkable woman whose contribution to Aotearoa New Zealand went largely unrecognised during her lifetime. In a long and eventful life she campaigned for birth control, women's rights, nuclear disarmament, social justice and the environment before such causes were popular. She wrote almost 40 books, numerous articles and School Journal stories, and was a published poet. Forthright she might have been, but the diminutive Elsie Locke was a very private and modest person. In this insightful and compelling biography, Maureen Birchfield peels back the layers of the public firebrand to find an ordinary woman who negotiated enormous personal obstacles to raise four children while striving tirelessly to improve the world around her. Recently declassified security files confirm that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (and its antecedents) had Elsie firmly in their sights, particularly while she was a member of the the Communist Party of New Zealand (1933-56). Incorporating information from these files, Maureen Birchfield delivers a fascinating portrait of a woman ahead of her time.

Pages: 560

Dimensions: 210 x 200 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2009