Harry Ricketts

Harry Ricketts brings Kipling to life - his traumatic childhood, split between England and India; his youthful years as a reporter in India, troubled by love and politics; and his first fame and return to London. Ricketts explores Kipling's passions, his imperialism, and his thirst to find a home.

A Life of Rudyard Kipling

The Unforgiving Minute

Anna Jackson

Geoffrey Miles

Tatjana Schaefer

Kathryn Walls

"Most New Zealand writing for young adults is designed to appeal to adolescents everywhere. Is there anything, then, that is characteristically 'New Zealand' about it? To what extent does it derive from local experience, or address a local audience? Focusing on a series of overlapping topics (race, sport, money, history, Englishness, future fictions, utopias and dystopias, religion and the 'Māori Gothic'), the contributors to this volume suggest that 'New Zealandness' is a sutble, at time almost invisible, but nevertheless pervasive concern in New Zealand young adult fiction"--Back cover.

New Zealand in Young Adult Fiction

A Made-Up Place

Strange Meetings provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914-1918, written through a series of actual encounters, or near-encounters, from Siegfried Sassoon's first, blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys and bacon at Eddie Marsh's breakfasts before the war, through famous moments like Sassoon's encouragement of Owen when both are in hospital at the same time; on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomas's widow and Ivor Gurney in 1932; and the last, strange lunch and 'longish talk' of Sassoon and David Jones in 1964, half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets and writers we encounter are Vera Brittain, Roland Leighton, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Nichols and Edmund Blunden. Ricketts's unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships, marking their responses to each other's work and showing how these affected their own poetry - one potent strand, for example, is the profound influence of Brooke, both as a model to follow and a burden to reject. The stories become intensely personal and vivid - we come to know each of the poets, their family and intellectual backgrounds and their very different personalities. And while the accounts of individual lives achieve the imaginative vividness of a novel, they also give us an entirely fresh sense of Georgian poetry, conveying all the excitement and frustration of poetic creation, and demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be 'about' became fractured and changed for ever by the terrible experiences of the war.

The Poets of the Great War

Strange Meetings

New Zealand sportspeople and their exploits regularly hit world headlines. This collection of writings by top authors is packed full of terrific stories of over 30 sports - the triumphs, disasters, magic moments, and the ones that got away. You'll find Ed Hillary's account of being the first person on the summit of Everest, Jack Lovelock's famous 1500-metre victory in the shadow of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Jean Batten's daring first solo flight from England to New Zealand. There are graphic descriptions of the protests, controversy and arrests that surrounded the Springboks' 1981 tour of New Zealand, and the defection 19 years later of top South African netball player Irene van Dyk to play for New Zealand. Richard Boock writes about sexism in sport, Melissa Moon gives a graphic story of mountain-running in Alaska, and Roger Hall reveals why he's known as Jonah. And this is only the beginning. This exciting anthology goes from fly-fishing to motor-racing, cricket to archery. There's literally something for every sports lover.

Harry Ricketts

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