Rugby Rebel investigates a sensational accusation made against brilliant All Black winger Duncan McGregor that he sold team secrets which cost the Original All Blacks their unbeaten record on the famous 1905 tour of Britain, France and the United States. What made it worse was that McGregor's Accusers were some of his fellow All Blacks. But has his name been unfairly besmirched? This book tells McGregor's extraordinary and previously untold story. In doing so, it delves deeply into an explosive and controversial period in New Zealand rugby history, the early 1900s, when 'shamateurism' was rife and the sport was split apart by the emergence of rugby league. Rugby Rebel shatters myths, offers new insights and provides enough information for the reader to decide whether McGregor was hero, or as his deractors claimed, villain. Featured in the 16 April 2018 NZ / Pasifika Newsletter.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 218

Publication Date: 16-03-2018

The Christ’s College campus in Christchurch is unquestionably one of the most remarkable collections of buildings in New Zealand, but there are few publications which focus solely on its architecture. To produce this book, Sir Miles Warren, the architect for Christ’s College for 43 years, enlisted fellow Christchurch architect Alec Bruce to create this succinct summary of the design of the college’s unique buildings. Earlier collaborations on projects at Christ’s College led naturally to this shared authorship. Drawings have been used instead of photographs, to show the range of types of graphical information from which buildings were produced and the different creative tendencies of the architects involved. Later design commissions contend with the challenge of working in an established heritage environment. Significant parts of Christ’s College were changed as a result of the Christchurch earthquakes, lending urgency to the publication of this book, which includes buildings which have been removed since September 2010.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 303 x 255 mm

Publication Date: 20-09-2021

This study of the art of William Hodges opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early paintings produced in the South Pacific. Following Pacific Island historians of the 1960s, it argues that it is possible to read the texts and visual material produced from early South Seas encounters against the grain, as moments of cross-cultural exchange that challenge postcolonial complacencies. Tuhituhi is presented in sections that follow the geographical and chronological progression of Cook’s voyage on the Resolution, for which William Hodges was hired as official artist, Cook’s ‘landskip painter’. Painters like Hodges found themselves staring again and again in disbelief at landscapes and seascapes that stretched 18th-century conventions of painting, such as the ‘picturesque’, the ‘sublime’ and the ‘beautiful’. Each chapter of Tuhituhi focuses on the close reading of a significant painting of a South Pacific location by Hodges. The last chapter considers the important influence of Hodges’ work on a series of paintings by the major twentieth-century New Zealand painter Colin McCahon.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 346

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Urban passenger rail patronage in Auckland and Wellington is now booming after many years of decline. Outside these two centres, however, the situation is quite different: intercity and regional passenger rail services are scarce, and no other city possesses suburban rail. Not only does this hamper the mobility of regional New Zealanders, it is incongruous in light of the climate emergency declared by many local councils. Can’t Get There from Here traces the expansion and – more commonly – the contraction of New Zealand’s passenger rail network over the last century. What is the historical context of today’s imbalance between rail and road? How far and wide did the passenger rail network once run? Why is there an abject lack of services beyond the North Island’s two main cities, even as demand for passenger transport continues to grow? This book seeks to answer these questions. In this fascinating study, Andre Brett argues that the trend away from passenger rail might appear inevitable and irreversible but it was not. Things could have been - and still could be - very different. We need to understand the challenges that brought passenger rail to the brink of extinction in order to create policy for future transport that is efficient and sustainable.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 384

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 15-11-2021

Stories From Small Town New Zealand. Peter Best delves into the intriguing early history that gives Eketahuna town and district its special character.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 80

Publication Date: 30-11-2001

Here’s a fresh account of life on New Zealand Railways. Most crew stories have been written from the front of the train, but the guard at the back of the train had a completely different view of the world and the things that occurred on the railway. Norman Junge was a guard on the Midland Line from 1947 to 1957, a period of busy train running and frequent challenges in “getting trains through”. Join Norman for an exceptionally interesting adventure covering mixed trains, work trains, picnic trains, shunting challenges, lost drawgear, fires, washouts, runaways, derailments, and of course interfaces with fellow railwaymen. This is a fascinating and easy read with much new information to interest the reader. Many of the accounts are illustrated with photographs taken by the author while on the job and supplemented by others.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 128

Dimensions: 210 x 280 mm

Publication Date: 21-03-2022