In 1990 those living on Chatham Islands/ Rekohu/ Wharekauri faced crisis. Annexed to New Zealand by a London proclamation, the Islands had experienced 150 years of New Zealand control. Years of muddlement, some good intentions, financial waste exploitation and theft, and failure to deliver democratic rights and basic infrastructure. The after-effects of Rogernomics had produced a government decision to “walk away”. Such infrastructure as existed would be abandoned, with the Islanders left to save themselves, or fail and leave.

In 1990, Islanders rose to the challenge of their new independence from Wellington. Their independent community co-operative, the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust, soon flourished. Today it operates electricity, ports, shipping, and other companies; uses a portfolio of fishing quota to support on-Island fishers, and supports private Island businesses.

Author Hugh Rennie is a retired lawyer, director, and trustee. His involvement in the Islands spans more than 50 years, including as solicitor to the former County Council, advisor to Islanders and Island interests, and eleven years as first chair of the Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust (1990-2001). In 1989 Rennie was awarded a CBE for services to broadcasting, in 1995 became a Queens Counsel, and in 2022 was knighted for services to governance, the law, business and the community.

ISBN: 978-1-99-116442-1

240mm x 170mm

Four colour cover with flaps

380 pages (softcover) illustrated

$60.00

South of Martinborough: Two Soldier Settlements and their Neighbours tells the absorbing story of the First and Second World War settlements at Tuturumuri and Tora, and neighbouring properties, and the challenges facing the South Wairarapa district’s pioneering farmers and fishers, as well as developments over the years since.

In the late 1990s, Danna Glendining began asking residents who had grown up and worked in the district to record memories of their lives from the 1920s to the present. After she and husband John left their Tuturumuri farm for the Waikato in 2000, boxes of precious recollections remained at the Wairarapa Archive until Diane Grant took up the challenge to further research and write the book.

Largely a book about the importance of people and their relationship with the land, the story is told in their own words through diaries, memoirs and interviews from the 19th century to today, bringing them and their times to life. It is the fascinating story of a microcosm of New Zealand society.

Diane Grant, a partner in Fraser Books, was a pre-school, primary, secondary, and university extension teacher and also national president of SPELD (Specific Learning Difficulties Association). Like Danna Glendining, she had major roles in the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL). In 2001, Diane Grant received the ONZM for her work in the community

ISBN: 978-0-9951232-4-3

240mm x 170mm

Four colour cover with flaps460 pages (softcover)  Colour and b/w photographs

$55.00

NZ$60.00 + pp

NZ$55.00 + pp

NZ$39.50 + pp

When National Business Review began in 1970, this innovative, under-resourced, but courageous fortnightly tabloid had little initial impact. Yet within five years it was a major weekly publication. Launched by young entrepreneur Henry Newrick, it had editorial input from many of the young journalists of the 1960s. NBR became essential business reading and set new standards in journalism. This memoir chronicles the way in which a few young New Zealanders with ambition but no money, grew an enterprise which attracted a succession of owners, gained millions in value, and led to its Fairfax-funded launch as a daily paper in1987 which lasting four years.

Author Hugh Rennie QC, Wellington lawyer, company director and writer, has drawn on his own knowledge of the early years, the recollections of others, surviving company records, and private sources.

ISBN:  978-0-9941360-9-1

240mm x 170mm

Four colour cover with flaps

206 pages (softcover) Lavishly illustrated

$35.00 + pp      

NZ$30.00 + pp

NZ$35.00 + pp

NZ$35.00 + pp

The manuscript of Guy Scholefield’s engaging memoir, with fascinating vignettes about life in New Zealand early in the 20th century and England during World War One, has been in the archives of the Alexander Turnbull Library since 1961. Ian F. Grant came across it when researching his 2018 newspaper history, Lasting Impressions. As Grant’s Introduction to The Little Doctor notes, Scholefield made “a significant contribution to preserving and recording a wide swathe of early New Zealand history”.

 Guy Hardy Scholefield, 1877-1963, is listed in the Te Ara Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – the successor to his pioneering publication – as journalist, historian, archivist, librarian and editor. Scholefield’s distinguished career included periods on the literary staffs of leading newspapers, war correspondent duties during World War One, and two decades as Parliamentary Librarian at the General Assembly Library and Dominion Archivist. He was the author of a number of books including the first Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Notable New Zealand Statesmen and Newspapers in New Zealand.

ISBN: 978-0-9941360-8-4

240mm x 170mm

Two colour cover with flaps

160 pages

$30.00 + pp

From Taranto to Trieste is the author’s fascinating journey retracing the actual path of the 2nd New Zealand Division in Italy from its arrival in October 1943 until the end of the European war. Although a personal journey with personal reflections, the real story is about the largely off-the-beaten track places the troops passed through, what they saw and experienced along the way and, in some cases what they missed. To complement the Division’s story, the historical context and military actions are explained with many maps as well as war-time photographs and colourful quotations from official military histories.

Author Jennifer Mallinson, with a history degree from Canterbury University, has lived in Verona, Italy since the early 1970s. A fluent Italian speaker and naturalized Italian she “found most Italians had no idea of the New Zealand presence during the war, even when Kiwis had been through their villages”.  

ISBN: 978-0-9941360-6-0

260mm x 200mm

Four colour cover with flaps

300 pages (soft cover)

Lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps

NZ$49.50 + pp                                                                 

Bishops, Boozers, Brethren & Burkas uses cartoons from 1860s to the present day to discuss the way religion in New Zealand has been represented by our cartoonists. There is no general history of religion in New Zealand so this book is a unique contribution in providing not only a cartoon history of religion in this country but also a history via cartoons. From the 1860s, settlers viewed issues of religion and politics as problematic, but in the main, religion remained part of the fabric of society.  However, religion was more of a concern for our cartoonists as New Zealand became an increasingly secular nation from the 1970s onwards.

Mike Grimshaw (PhD Otago) is Associate Professor in Sociology at University of Canterbury, New Zealand. A founding series editor for Radical Theologies and Philosophies (Palgrave Macmillan) and founding co-editor of Continental Thought & Theory: (http://ctt.canterbury.ac.nz/about-ctt/)

ISBN: 978-0-9922477-1-3

260mm X 200mm

Four colour cover with flaps

140 pages (soft cover)

Over 100 cartoons

NZ$39.50 + pp                                                                 

NZ$30.00 + pp

NZ$49.50 + pp

NZ$39.50 + pp

In early 1928, during a time of pioneering, long-distance flights, two New Zealand pilots set off from Australia on the first attempted aerial crossing of the wild Tasman Sea. Amid fervent hope, government interference, a spirit of patriotism, wide newspaper coverage and family pride, John 'Scotty' Moncrieff and George Hood, along with their non-flying partner Ivan Kight, dreamed of closer British Empire ties, a safer New Zealand and a shot at aviation glory. The disappearance of their aircraft Aotearoa remains one of Australasia's great flying mysteries. Bill Conroy has researched this fascinating and tragic story for more than three decades. In the first full-length examination of Moncrieff and Hood’s flight, he recounts the conception, planning, execution and aftermath of the project which enthralled both sides of the Tasman. Bill Conroy, a published poet, lives in Tauranga, after a long career in central and local government administration.

ISBN: 978-0-9922475-9-1

240mm X 170mm

Colour cover with flaps

176 pages (soft cover)

Lavishly illustrated

NZ$35.00 + pp

NZ$69.50 + pp

NZ$35.00 + pp

John E. Martin's biography of Charles Rooking Carter connects the English Victorian world and colonial New Zealand.  In Wellngton, in the 1850s, he contributed significantly to harbour reclamation and public buildings as a builder, contractor and architect. In the Wairarapa, he promoted the settlement of working settlers on the land, with the township of Carterton named after him, and founded a large estate on the Taratahi Plain.

Featuring 250 cartoons of and by Māori, this is the first ever collection to capture the prevailing attitudes and feelings of each period, from the earliest cartoons in the 1860s, and with a particular emphasis on the decades from the 1930s to the 1990s. It shows, through cartoons by both Māori and Pākehā, and a parade of stereotypes, how attitudes about race and ethnicity have changed in New Zealand over time.

This is the story of Alfred W. Renall, an early settler in the Hutt Valley and then in the Wairarapa, who was a successful miller, father of 16 children and at various times a Provincial Council member. Elected to the first Parliament, he was also a Masterton borough councillor and twice the mayor as well as a leading figure in the Small Farms Association and subsequent Masterton Trust Lands Trust.

Born in Heybridge, Essex, England in 1813, he travelled with his family to Port Nicholson aboard the Martha Ridgway late in 1840. There followed a rich, varied and sometimes controversial life during the next six decades. 'Fearless and Outspoken' provides a fascinating portrait of a pioneer and how he and his family succeeded in a very different land at the bottom of the world.

ISBN: 978-0-9922475-8-4

240mm X 170mm

Colour cover with flaps

Lavishly illustrated with fold-out colour maps

328 pages (soft cover)

NZ$39.50 + pp

ISBN: 978-0-9922477-0-6

ISSN: 2253-3583

260mm x 200mm

250 cartoons

208 pages (soft cover)

NZ$39.50 + pp

ISBN: 978-0-9951232-0-5

240mm X 170 mm

Colour cover

Lavishly illustrated
146 pages (soft cover)

Published by Wairarapa Archive, Queen St, Masterton, in association with Fraser Books

NZ$30.00 + pp

NZ$39.50 + pp

NZ$39.50 + pp

NZ$30.00 + pp

A delightfully told and illustrated story that interweaves the story of eels migrating across the ocean from a New Zealand river near an historic bridge north of Masterton commemorating the soldiers who lost their lives when they also travelled thousands of miles to fight in the Great War. The story is based loosely on the life of a young boy who grew up near the river and with the eels and then lost his life on the Western Front during the First World War. Eels of Anzac Bridge has been reprinted four times to date.

A memoir with a difference. Bob Brockie's life has encompassed editing and illustrating at School Publications, design concepts for Te Papa, DSIR's ground-breaking Orongoronga Valley forest study, possum and hedgehog research, 40 years as National Business Review cartoonist, the writing of a number of books, and over 600 popular newspaper science columns. In 2004 Brockie was elected Companion of the Royal Society; in 2013 he became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to science and cartooning.

K'yra is a young adult fantasy thriller about a savage, prehistoric land, and a young woman's quest to survive.  Author K W Austin is a musician, writer, and amateur scientist. Already well-known for his work in popular and classical music and his passion for wild animals, he began writing K'yra: Hunting for Unity after working with lions in a zoo and listening to Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring'.

ISBN: 978-0-9582617-7-7

220mm x 260mm

Four colour throughout

32 pages (softcover)

NZ$20.00 +pp

ISBN: 978-0-9582320-7-4

260mm x 200mm

Four colour cover with flaps
350 cartoons, sketches and photographs with 8
colour pages

148 pages (Soft cover)

NZ$39.50 +pp

ISBN: 978-0-9941360-3-9

240mm x 163 mm

Four colour cover
220 pages (soft cover)

NZ$25.00 +pp