With Great Foresight was originally published in 2006 and traces the development of Christchurch International Airport. This new updated edition covers the construction of the $237 million integrated terminal building and control tower. It also recounts the role the airport played following the devastating earthquake on February 22, 2011.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 271

Dimensions: 266 x 250 x 20 mm

Publication Date: 31-12-2013

The Boxing Day Riot of 1879 when a parade of Orange Lodge members was attacked by a mob of Irish Catholic navvies swinging axe-handles, a slander case involving one of the city's richest merchants, the famous Severed Hand Mystery of 1885 ... Following on from his first volume, Christchurch Crimes 1850-1875: SCandal and Skulduggery in Port and Town, historian Geoffrey Rice presents another fascinating collection of Christchurch crimes and scandals drawn from nineteenth-century newspaper court reports, this time covering the later Victorian period from 1876-1899.
We meet some of the city's most notoirous citizens of the period, such as the photographer Eden George, and the preacher-fraudster Arthur Bently Worthington, who caused the one and only reading of the Riot Act in Christchurch. The Opawa axe murder of 1897 includes a rare photograph of the body.
Magistrates and judges had to deal with a procession of society's law-breakers passing through their courts, from apologetic drunks and brazen prostitutes, shifty forgers and brutal thugs, rapists and arsonists, bigamists and embezzlers to desperate women charged with manslaughter or murder. The defence lawyers were often faced with a difficult task, yet Christchurch in this period had several highly skilled courtroom lawyers who knew how to persuade a jury.
The author's easy-to-read story-telling style and genuine enthusiasm for and knowledge of his subject bring to life another rich, colourful and intriguing chapter from the city's past.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 260

Publication Date: 20-11-2013

This unique account of community-based theatre - theatre created by professionals working with communities - challenges the mainstream history of New Zealand theatre. Rebellious Mirrors looks at the early production of theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand, investigates the experimental period of the 1970s, which is seen as searching for an authentic role, portrays the beginnings of Maori theatre, and gives a comprehensive portrait of a field of work during the period 1990-2010: work that took place within the contradictory framework of neo-liberalism.

Paul Maunder has had a life-long career in New Zealand theatre, beginning in experimental group theatre, exploring political and bicultural theatre, with occasional forays into the mainstream, before becoming committed to community-based theatre.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 272

Dimensions: 152 x 228 mm

Publication Date: 20-08-2013

Here is a series of sixty-four letters, carefully preserved by Mary McIlrath in Killinchy, Co. Down, N. Ireland.

They detail the progress of Mary’s great uncles, the two McIlrath brothers who emigrated in 1860 to New Zealand, and describe their work and achievements over fifty-five years. Historically and genealogically valuable are the frequent references to other emigrants from Killinchy and surrounding district whom they frequently met there. The news, messages and greetings included in the letters of the McIlrath brothers were sure to have been read and circulated to relatives, friends and neighbours, drawing that community at home closer together as well as closer to the one on the other side of the world. Re-reading these letters today, with their deeply personal style and content, it is easy to imagine that our ancestors are writing to us from the past.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 143

Dimensions: 210 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-04-2009

The Three Mile Bush straddled the road between Greytown and Masterton, settled in 1854. In 1856 the Wellington Provincial Council decided to establish a new settlement on the road through the area, soon to be renamed Caterton. The Look Of Caterton tells of the town's and district's beginnings and progress over the last 150 years. The informative text marks the milestones along the decades from the early sawmilling era to today's bustling service town, but the story is principally told through a collection of photographs that instantly capture the look and ethos of each period. 108 pages 171 x 241 mm

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 01-07-2007

Frantically galloping under fire across the devastation of No Man's Land on the Western Front, the men of the Otago Mounted Rifles rode their way into New Zealand's military history at Messines in 1917.
Featuring nearly 400 photographs, illustrations and maps, The Troopers Tales records the history of the regiment from the 1860s to the present day, and tells the fascinating personal stories of many previously unknown New Zealand soldiers.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 382

Publication Date: 01-03-2012

DoP Sept 2008, Christchurch Raised on a remote sheep farm in the Mid Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island, Emily Peters (1858-1927) had a remarkable career as a nurse. In the 1890s she travelled to the United Kingdom to train at Westminster Hospital. She then nursed in England and served as a nurse in the South African War and in Serbia and Egypt during World War I. In this intriguing book, two authors, Joan Woodward and Glenys Mitchell, have linked Emily Peter's surviving papers - among them a fascinating nursing casebook and a vivid war diary - into a narrative account of an extraordinary life of devotion to helping others. The book illuminates the history of nursing in England and New Zealand. It also casts a light on an emerging New Zealand nationhood and on women's emancipation. In Emily Peter's life and writings readers will see New Zealanders of British descent becoming a distinct people with their own national characteristics over a single generation.

Pages: 167

DoP 2009, NZ Masterton's Queen Elizabeth Park sits on a 'publick reserve' set aside when the town was first surveyed in 1854. It has hosted the town's stockade, the district's first Pastoral Show and, for a period in the 1920s, the world's fastest time for a mile run on a grass track. Gareth Winter, archivist and garden writer, traces the development of the park and its associated reserves, including the town cemetry, from its days as a rough paddock leased for grazing to today's expansive reserve. Along the way he tells of the man who dug his own grave, of the hunt for the corpse with a missing hand, the town's near-fatal fling with early ballooning and the thousands who gathered in the park for the many civic ceremonies held there. It tells how the park has developed and changed over the years, to meet the changing leisure needs of the community, while retaining the sense of a Victorian park, complete with towering trees.

Pages: 312

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 30-11-2008

Pages: 334

William Shakespeare and John Milton are the two most important poets in English. Shakespeare’s achievements are unchallengeable and secure. Milton can make a far more controversial claim to eminence. He wrote the only poem in English recognized as an epic, Paradise Lost, a poem which challenged the beliefs and presuppositions of all of its readers. As a literary writer, his political and historical significance is unique; he was at the centre of the most traumatic period of modern British history, and this left an imprint on his writings.
Richard Bradford addresses two key topics in this short account of Milton’s life and work: the parallels between Paradise Lost and the events in England of the mid-to-late-seventeenth century; and the question of whether Milton’s writings reflect his sense of despair at man’s apparent failure to make the best of our world after the Fall and is thus the first testimony of his religious doubt.

Fascinating for both the general reader and for academics, Richard Bradford brings new understanding to the life, times and works of one of Britain’s most significant writers.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 120

Publication Date: 22-02-2013