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Sailing apprenticeship Peter James Blake was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 1 October 1948, and raised in the suburb of Bayswater on the northern edge of the Waitematā Harbour. His father, Brian Blake, had…

Kīngi Matutaera Īhaka was born at Te Kao, Northland, on 18 October 1921. His great-grandfather, Parāone Ngāruhe, signed the Treaty of Waitangi on behalf of Te Aupōuri. Kīngi was the 13th of 14 children of Eru Tīmoko…

Early yearsJanet Frame was born on 28 August 1924 at St Helen’s Hospital, Dunedin, to Lottie Clarice Godfrey (who had worked as a maid in the Picton home of Katherine Mansfield’s family, the Beauchamps), and her husband…

John O’Shea occupies a decisive position in the development of the New Zealand film industry. He was responsible for the only feature production in New Zealand between 1940 and the early 1970s, and singlehandedly…

Owen Woodhouse was a distinguished judge and the architect of New Zealand’s no-fault accident compensation system. After naval service in the Second World War, Woodhouse worked as a lawyer until his appointment as a…

Early life On 29 May 1953 New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepali Tenzing Norgay, as part of a British team, reached the 8,848-metre summit of Mt Everest, the world’s highest mountain. This was the culmination of 12…

New Zealand's first chief justice, William Martin, the youngest son of Henry Martin, a manufacturer, and his wife, Mary Martin, was baptised on 22 May 1807 in Birmingham, England, where he received his early education…

Joan Wiffen was a self-taught palaeontologist who greatly advanced knowledge of fossil reptiles in New Zealand. Wiffen, who described herself as ‘a rank amateur, a Hawkes Bay housewife in fact, with no scientific…

Maharaia Winiata, commonly known as Maha, was born on 29 September 1912 at Ngāhina pā, near Rūātoki, in the eastern Bay of Plenty. His parents were Winiata Piahana and his wife, Te Ruakawhena Kohu, both of Ngāi…

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…

Michael Savage was born on 23 March 1872 at Tatong, near Benalla in Victoria, Australia, the youngest of eight children of Irish immigrants Richard Savage and his wife, Johanna Hayes. Michael's mother died in 1878 when…

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…

Ormond Edward Burton was born in Auckland on 16 January 1893, the son of Mary Alice Beatrice Winn and her husband, Robert Burton, a carter, who was later a market gardener. As a child Ormond learnt the value of hard…

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…

William Leonard Williams, known as Leonard Williams to Pākehā and as Mita Rēnata to Māori, was born at Paihia, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, on 22 July 1829. He was the third child and eldest son of Jane Nelson and her…

One of the great international aviators of the 1930s, Jean Gardner Batten was born on 15 September 1909 in Rotorua, the only daughter of a dentist, Frederick Harold Batten, and his wife, Ellen (Nellie) Blackmore. She…

J.C. Sturm, also known as Te Kare Papuni and Jacquie Baxter, was a pioneering writer of poetry and short stories. Long overshadowed by her first husband, the poet James K. Baxter, Jacquie emerged in later life as a…

William Pember Reeves was born at Lyttelton on 10 February 1857, three weeks after his parents arrived in New Zealand. He was later to say that, although he was born a New Zealander, he only just managed it. His parents…

Harry Scott was a psychology educator and researcher whose work on the effects of isolation evolved from his own experiences as an imprisoned conscientious objector during the Second World War. He was a significant…

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…