New Zealand History

Patronage and Scientific Rationalism: The Public Service Act 1912

Talk by Dr. John E. Martin, Parliamentary Historian on 8 October 2012.  This is the first in the IPANZ series of talks marking the centenary of the Public Service Act.

Charles Mackay: The fall and rise of New Zealand's first 'homosexual'

In 1929 Charles Mackay, a former mayor of Wanganui bled to death on a Berlin street corner – a victim of violent clashes between police and Communist protesters. How did he get there? An earlier incident triggered Mackay’s tragic trajectory: in 1920 he shot the returned soldier-cum-writer Walter D’Arcy Cresswell, who was blackmailing the (secretly homosexual) mayor. Paul Diamond’s research into the events surrounding both shootings has uncovered new information about this hidden aspect of New Zealand history. Seminar presented by Paul Diamond, 7 September 2011.

Life on the Battlefields 94 years later

Belgian historian Charlotte Descamps, who has lived her whole life in the First World War battlefields of the Ypres Salient, talks about her experiences at Varlet Farm, how evidence of the conflict is unearthed every year, how modern technology is helping to identify human remains almost a century after the war, the ‘iron harvest’ in the Salient (over 200 tons of live ammunition is still collected very year) and the work of the bomb disposal squad, how other items like helmets, rifles, rum jars, badges, buckles and silent pickets help tell the history of the area, and the ongoing research efforts to locate tunnels, ammunition dumps and dugouts. This seminar was presented on 1 August 2012.  You can also download the associated slides for this talk (4mb, pdf)

Scandal sheet confidential: voyages around NZ Truth (1977-2008)

Redmer Yska recalls his involvement with 'NZ Truth' newspaper over three decades: first, as a journalist, second as a historical researcher, and lastly as its biographer, resulting in the 2010 book NZ Truth: the Rise and Fall of the People's Paper. This seminar was presented on 5 October 2011.

The search for Anne Perry

Dr Joanne Drayton discusses her biography of crime writer Anne Perry, better known in New Zealand as the convicted muderer Juliet Hulme.

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