Guinness is a name instantly recognised the world over – the famous stout has been brewed at St James’s Gate in Dublin for over 250 years, and is now brewed under contract in fifty countries and 9 million glasses of Guinness are drunk each day worldwide. Guinness family members, originally in three major groupings − brewing, banking, and the church – have achieved fame in all walks of life, with some scaling great heights, others tasting great sadness. Guinness Down Under is the never-before-told story of how the famous brew and the family came to New Zealand and Australia in the mid-1800s – the brew itself through export and eventually in-country brewing, and the family through four grandsons of Arthur Guinness who made a new life Down Under, where many of their descendants remain. In this indepth and fascinating account we learn about the origins of Guinness stout, the nature of the export trade, and the vagaries of the market We learn of the challenges, highlights, and sadness in the complex lives of the four cousins who, independently and at different times, sought to make a better life for themselves Down Under. The entrepreneur, public figure, and political activist; the successful Canterbury pastoralist; the “black sheep” of the family who set up as a Guinness brewer in Melbourne then disappeared forever; the clergyman who took his family to a vicarage in Melbourne, just when the new city was flourishing. Also described is the progress of the iconic Guinness stout in Australia and New Zealand, from early imports in the mid-1800s through to present-day production in Adelaide and Auckland.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 392

Dimensions: 190 x 250 mm

Publication Date: 08-03-2018

From the classrooms and playgrounds of early 1900s New Zealand to the battlefields of Gallipoli, the tragedy of the Marquette, and the trenches of France, this is the story of Private Leslie McAlpine. Many families in New Zealand have an Anzac who served in the First World War. Leslie is the Anzac in our family. He is a fit, healthy young man who never completely loses hope that he will get back home. His story shows how decisions made in the wider world affect our lives and our opportunities. Leslie leaves New Zealand as one of the 2235 men in the 4th Reinforcements and the story follows their lives and deaths. In 1914, as New Zealand goes to war, Leslie is in the navy, on the Torch, and loving it. But he wants to see a bit more action. He reads the accounts in the papers describing what the New Zealand and Australian soldiers are doing as they travel across the world in convoy and he wants to be part of that. So in January 1915 he enlists in the army in the 4th Reinforcements. He is just 18. With an adventure before him that everyone in New Zealand approves of and celebrates, what can possibly go wrong? The Allied forces and politicians plan strategies and make decisions. Leslie and the 4th Reinforcements follow orders and do their very best. Surviving Gallipoli and the Marquette disaster, Leslie is killed in action on the Western Front. He is just 19.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 242

Dimensions: 170 x 239 mm

Publication Date: 30-03-2018

Hudson & Halls: The food of love is more than just a love story, though a love story it certainly is. It is a tale of two television chefs who helped change the bedrock bad attitudes of a nation in the 1970s and 80s to that unspoken thing – homosexuality. Peter Hudson and David Halls became reluctant role models for a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ generation of gay men and women who lived by omission. They were also captains of a culinary revolution that saw the overthrow of Aunty Daisy and Betty Crocker and the beginnings of Pacific-rich, Asian-styled international cuisine. Their drinking, bitching and bickering on screen, their spontaneous unchoreographed movements across the stage that left cameras and startled production staff exposed broke taboos and melted formalities. They captivated an unlikely bunch of viewers, from middle-aged matrons to bush-shirted blokes. Hudson and Halls were pioneers of celebrity television as we know it today: the naughty, not-quite-normal boys next door who rocketed to stardom on untrained talent and a dream. When Peter Hudson became seriously ill with prostate cancer, David Halls was inconsolable. What remained unchanged through it all was their abiding love for each other. In this riveting, fast-paced and meticulously researched book, New York Times bestselling author Joanne Drayton celebrates the legacy of the unforgettable Hudson and Halls.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 304

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 19-10-2018

"Standing among Tony's installation of paintings and painted Coca Cola bottles precariously balanced on a shelf held up by a stick, I was a little freaked out. Tony, the art provocateur, had succeeded in provoking me." Welcome to the low-brow, high-art world of Tony de Lautour. Writer and curator Peter Vangioni provides and entertaining introduction to the work of one of Aotearoa New Zealand's leading artists. Described as "a body of work like nothing else this country has seen", de Lautour's paintings and sculptures over the past thirty years are brought together taking the reader on a journey from the chaos of his early paintings inspired by seedy underground street culture to the careful geometric abstracts of his later major canvases. Includes an interview between de Lautour and fellow artist Peter Robinson.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 212 x 270 mm

Publication Date: 21-05-2018

Too often art books are dense and inaccessible. 101 Works of Art is immediately engaging with large images, big details and conversational texts. Written to feel as if the reader is standing with the curator in front of the painting, texts are short, personal and insightful. Learn how an artwork was made, what inspired the artist, the secrets behind the frame. See up close the movement of the painter's brushstrokes, the glinting surface of a glass sculpture the almost-hidden detail of a Dutch master. This large, beautifully presented book showcases 101 treasures from its collection – paintings, drawings, sculpture, film and photographs that stand out in a line-up of New Zealand's most significant collected works. Coloured page edges and ribbons match the colours within. And like an origami cherry on top, the patchwork dust jacket opens out then folds back on itself to make a second dust jacket. Designed by award-winning artist and designer Aaron Meehre, 101 was shortlisted for Best Illustrated book and won Best Cover at the 2016 PANZ awards.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 352

Dimensions: 250 x 295 mm

Publication Date: 31-12-2015

One of Aotearoa New Zealand's most perceptive artists, Laurence Aberhart is a photographer who makes images of the vanishing past in an accelerating world. It was Christchurch where he developed his eye for the scenes that later brought his work to international attention. These early photographs of ordinary suburban houses, abandoned shops, masonic lodges and long-lost fast-food joints - some of them now iconic, others unseen or little know - depict a city and a way of life that no longer exists.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 136

Dimensions: 220 x 220 mm

Publication Date: 11-09-2017

After a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch on 22 February 2011 photographer David Cook returned to his former hometown and found that central city irreparably damaged. He was inspired to unearth his archive of 6000 photographs of the city he'd shot as a young man in his twenties, rebuilding through images the city as he remembered it. The photographs he selected reveal Christchurch in the 1980s - Cathedral Square, Centennial Pool, Lancaster Park, schoolboys, punks, nuns. Meet Me In The Square is a moving, nostalgic journey through the city we'll never see again.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 180

Dimensions: 210 x 276 mm

Publication Date: 31-12-2014

Letters from WWII New Zealand Expeditionary Force 1940-1943 R.G. (Dick) Harris These letters are from Egypt, Greece, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Italy: Dick Harris travelled huge distances in North Africa, the Middle East and Southern Europe. For more than three years he lived with bombing from the air and shelling fro the ground. He manoeuvred guns and ammunition, lived in slit trenches and tents, talked with people from other cultures, and learned the skills of radio operation. He was a quiet gentle person who liked his own company, read widely, enjoyed writing and painting. World War II brought adventure, exploration, companionship, challenges, hardship and loss. It changed his life forever. This is his story, told in his own words, and the story of many New Zealanders who set out to defeat tyranny and make the world a better place.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 151

Dimensions: 160 x 222 mm

Publication Date: 31-10-2017

Forewords by the Right Honourable Helen Clark and Right Honourable James Bolger When young Pat Lynch was growing up in south Auckland, helping his father in the garden and enjoying the beach with his siblings, little did he know that in his future he'd be influencing politicians of all persuasions, and even a prime minister or two. This book tells the story of his path through New Zealand's education system. Starting as a De La Salle teaching Brother, he eventually became involved in smoothing the way for the integration of church schools into the state system, and doing his best to make sure all were dealt with fairly and equitably.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 224

Dimensions: 153 x 233 mm

Publication Date: 01-04-2018

The poetry in David Eggleton’s new collection possesses an intensity and driven energy, using the poet’s recognisable signature oratory voice, strong in beat and measure, rooted in rich traditions of chant, lament and ode. Mashing together the lyrical and the slangy, celebrating local vernaculars while simultaneously plugged in to a global zeitgeist of technobabble and fake news, Eggleton recycles and ‘repurposes’ high visual culture and demotic aural culture. Edgeland offers a tragicomic and surreal skewering of the cons, swindles, posturings and flaws of damaged people on the make, dislocating the reader with high speed jinks and swerves. A satirical eye interrogates ‘data’, media bilge, opinion, social change, extreme experience, and worst-case-scenario extrapolations. A menagerie of vivid characters burst off the page – including the man who mistook the moon for a candy bar, instigators, prestidigitators, procurators, promulgators, Zorro and Governor Grey – alongside a survey of 35 types of beard, an ode to ooze, metadada, Gordon Ramsay’s pan-sizzled bull’s pizzle, a Baxterian moa, and various other waka jumpers hailing from Jafaville to Jack’s Blowhole. Edgeland is a dazzling display of polychromatic virtuosity, teeming with irrepressible wordplay, startling imagery and anarchic wit, from one of New Zealand’s best-loved poets

Bind: paperback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm