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Wolfgang Rosenberg was an influential economist and public intellectual in New Zealand during the second half of the twentieth century. A refugee from Nazi Germany, he spent much of his working life as a lecturer in…

Alister Donald Miles McIntosh was born at Picton on 29 November 1906, the eldest of four children of Henry Hobson McIntosh, a telegraphist, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Cowles Miles. From 1920 to 1924 he was educated…

Shirley Smith was a human-rights campaigner and trail-blazing lawyer. As a community activist from the early 1950s she fought for social and political reform, while as a lawyer she spoke for those who had no voice and…

Thomas Philip Shand was born at Ngāpara, North Otago, on 16 April 1911, the son of Gilbert Esme Tressillian Shand and his wife, Constance Kippenberger. His parents, who were both from prominent Canterbury families, ran…

Bernard Fergusson was the country’s tenth governor-general and the last in a long line of British representatives in the imperial tradition. Cheerful and friendly, he was immensely popular and admired for his…

James Keir Baxter was born on 29 June 1926 at Nurse Ross’s maternity home, Dunedin, the second son of Archibald McColl Learmond Baxter, an Otago farmer, and his wife, Millicent Amiel Macmillan Brown. His brother,…

Ronald Joseph Smith was born in Wellington on 2 May 1921, the son of carpenter Joseph Copley Smith and his London-born wife, Mabel Ellen Courcha, a former laundry worker. He was educated at Wellington College, leaving…

Herbert Otto Roth was born in Vienna, Austria, on 7 December 1917, the son of Therese Pepi Heilpern and her husband, Emil Roth, a railway engineer. He was called Otti during his years in Austria, but was later known as…

Early life Hone Peneamine Anatipa Te Pona Tuwhare was born on 21 October 1922 at Kokewai, a rural area south-east of Kaikohe, Northland. He was of Ngāpuhi descent, with connections to Ngāti Korokoro, Ngāti Tautahi, Te…

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…

John Lochiel Robson was born at Halcombe, near Feilding, on 4 June 1909, the son of John Templeton Robson and his wife, Margaret Catherine O’Brien. His father was a teacher, as was his mother before her marriage. After…

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…

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…

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…

Michael King was New Zealand’s most popular late twentieth-century historian. His best work combined the research-based scholarship of a historian with the fluent accessible style of a journalist. His output was…

The Holyoake connection with New Zealand goes back to 1843, when the great-grandparents of Keith Jacka Holyoake settled at Riwaka, near Motueka, and it was there that he spent much of his youth and began his farming…

John Alfred Alexander Lee was the son of Alfred Lee and Mary Isabella Taylor. In 1889 they had filled out a form giving notice of their intention to marry but failed to actually do so. Alfred was a man of many parts –…

W.H. (Bill) Oliver was one of New Zealand’s most eminent twentieth-century historians. He gained distinction as a scholar of British and New Zealand history and was part of a tradition of poet-historians, with five…

New Zealand’s fourth Labour prime minister, Norman Eric Kirk, was the first to be born and grow to maturity in New Zealand. He was born at Waimate in South Canterbury on 6 January 1923, the eldest of three children of…