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William Colenso was born probably on 17 November 1811 and was baptised on 13 December 1811 in Penzance, Cornwall, England. He was the eldest child of Samuel May Colenso, a saddler and town councillor of Penzance, and…

Youth Sonja Margaret Loveday Vile was born on 11 November 1923 in Wallaceville, Upper Hutt. Her mother, Gwladys Ilma Vile, was a state-registered nurse; her father was Gerald Dempsey, an army major from Cork, Ireland…

Marti Friedlander was one of New Zealand’s most outstanding twentieth-century photographers. Her work was massively influential both in the development of photography as an artistic practice in New Zealand and in the…

Maurice Shadbolt was a leading figure in the growth of a New Zealand literature during the second half of the twentieth century. He was the first New Zealand author to earn a good living as a full-time writer, although…

Fintan Patrick Walsh was born Patrick Tuohy at Pātūtahi, Poverty Bay, on 13 August 1894, one of eleven children of farming parents Andrew Tuohy and his wife, Hannah O'Sullivan, both born in Ireland. He was raised a…

Yorkshireman Kenneth Cumberland was the first qualified geographer to teach the subject at university level in New Zealand. He joined the new Department of Geography at Canterbury University College in 1938, and soon…

Lauris Edmond was 51 when she began to publish poetry, and quickly won attention as a voice that was both mature and fresh. Identified at first with the 1970s upsurge of poetry by women, she was later recognised for her…

George Laking was one of New Zealand’s key twentieth-century public servants. In a career lasting more than 40 years, he was adviser on international relations to successive governments and an important diplomat during…

Edward Robert Tregear, son of William James Tregear and his wife, Mary Norris, was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England, on 1 May 1846. He led a comfortable life there with his mother and younger sisters, Mary and…

Communist and trade unionist Bill Andersen was one of the best-known figures in New Zealand’s radical left in the middle decades of the twentieth century. An influential union leader in the 1950s and 1960s, he…

Public servant Bing Lucas was responsible for developing New Zealand’s modern national park system from the early 1970s, balancing conservation and recreational values. Under his direction its workforce was…

John Clarke was a pioneering comedian, actor and writer, whose television appearances as farmer Fred Dagg in the 1970s marked the emergence of a distinctive home-grown style of New Zealand comedy. In 1977 Clarke moved…

M. K. Joseph was a novelist, poet, and literary academic of the 1940s–1970s, best known for the powerful short novel, A soldier’s tale. Outwardly conservative, with a professorship, scholarly publications, a stable…

Walter Nash was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England, on 12 February 1882, the fifth of six children of Alfred Arthur Nash and his wife, Amelia Randle. The family was poor and Alfred was often drunk. A rug…