Backlist > Biography

"Godfrey's Ghost" is, at its heart, the story of a father written by his son. As a young man, Arnold Ridley was chiefly known as the author of the long-running comedy thriller, "The Ghost Train". Today he is remembered for his television performances as Private Godfrey, the oldest member of the Dad's Army platoon. But Army came towards the close of a long life, and although Arnold Ridley was Private Godfrey, Private Godfrey was not Arnold Ridley. From humble beginnings living above the family boot-shop in Bath, through the horrors ... read more

John Britten was a Kiwi legend of the late 20th century whose distinctive hand-built pink-and-blue motorcycle broke four world speed records and reached iconic status worldwide. Tragically, he died of cancer at just 45. Eight years later, Dare to Dream tells the inside story of the world’s most innovative motorbike - and the man, his family, and the friends who made the dream of winning the world’s toughest motorcycle races come true. John Britten’s passion for building his own motorbike and determination to succe... read more

Henry John Chitty Harper was the first Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. To mark the 150th anniversary of his arrival in 1856, ten experienced historians tell the story of the setting up of a branch of the Church of England in a new colony.

How many parents have exclaimed, "What did we do to to have a child like this?" To Catch A Butterfly is a book about relationships, specifically the relationship between parent and daughter. Equally, it could be viewed as a book which explores the relationship from the daughter's point of view: "How come I got parents like this?" In this book Barrie Allom, author of the controversial autobiography "Beyond Belief", writes candidly of a much loved, but not always understood, daughter - one who, like he did, walked outside the frame ... read more

The story of General Freyberg's Divisional Protective Troop, so crucial to the success of the North African campaign in World War 2, is told for the first times by the one living participant. Churchill called Freyberg "The Salamander" and his Protective Troop was dubbed "The Salamander's Brood". Freyberg, whose military legacy has been questioned in recent years, could have won the Battle of Crete with a handful of working radios. After the early chaotic months in North Africa, Freyberg decided, over the opposition of other milita... read more

A fully illustrated biography, including never published before photographs, of the archetypal screen icon who lived fast and died young This official account is a detailed, chronological biography of Dean, fully illustrated with color and black and white images from classic movies, family archives, and private collections. Scattered throughout the book are special, self-contained feature pages that explore aspects of his life and times: his passion for cars, his films, America in the 1950's, and the famous, black and white Dennis ... read more

Born at the start of the twentieth century, John Betjeman later wrote that he always knew he would be a poet. In time, he would indeed become the most popular Poet Laureate since Tennyson, but he was more than that: as a noted broadcaster and journalist, he also did much to help us appreciate the beauty all around us – in the landscape, in architecture, in churches, on the coast and on the railway. At once lyrical and humorous, nostalgic and unsentimental, and above all distinctively English, Betjeman is in the first rank of poets ... read more

Violet Jessop's life is an inspiring story of survival. She was born in 1887 in Argentina, the eldest child of Irish immigrants. At the age of 21 she became the breadwinner for her widowed mother and five siblings when she commenced a career as a stewardess that was to span 40 years. She survived the sinking of the Titanic and for most people one sinking would be enough. But Violet also survived the sinking of the hospital ship Britannic and for her, this disaster was even more horrifying. Her attitude to life was formed during a y... read more

This book tells the story of how Michael overcame the adversity of leaving school at the age of fifteen unable to spell his own name. Over the following decade, with sheer grit and determination, he succeeded in completing a horticultural apprenticeship, won a scholorship, and was awarded the prestigious UNESCO Literacy Award which he travelled to Paris to receive. The book describes how, as a young man, Michael built up a small property portfolio on low gardener's wages perservered with life struggles to achieve goals and dreams.

A Thorn in Their Side is Robert Green’s extraordinary pursuit of the truth about how and why his aunt Hilda Murrell, a noted English rose grower, met a violent and bizarre death. In 1984, at the age of 78, Hilda Murrell was found brutally murdered in the Shropshire countryside. She had just gained approval to testify on the unsolved problems of radioactive waste at the first British planning inquiry into a new nuclear power plant. The police theory that a lone, panicking burglar robbed and abducted Hilda in her own car for p... read more

Girl of good Presbyterian family becomes pregnant by a charming Nigerian law student. A desperate predicament - but was it really an accident? More than a memoir, this real-life story is a social history bringing into close focus the tribulations faced by an unmarried mother in the male-dominated society of the 1950s.

The one and a half square meters of footpath space on Broadway, Newmarket, Auckland from which Mark Grantham sells his chocolate bars for charity has to be one of the smallest retail sites in New Zealand. One regular customer jokingly refers to it as Mark's 'office', because it is where Mark - severly disabled with cerebral palsy since birth - has plied his trade for the last seventeen years. For 20 years now, Chris Grantham has been Mark's chocolate admin man. For 33 years he has also doubled as his father and therefore knows him... read more

This book tells the life-story of Major General Sir Edward Chaytor, who is arguably the best military commander that New Zealand has produced. It covers his family background and formative years but focuses on his military career.

In August 1939 Stanislaw Dabrowski was a 19 year old accounting student working part time in his family bakery business in Lwów, Poland.  Within a few weeks the Germans had occupied half of Poland and the Soviet Union invaded the rest, including Lwów. The family discovered the reality of life in comrade Stalin’s empire: destitution, arrest, imprisonment, beatings, show trials on false charges, deportation to slave labour camps and executions. After enduring months of slave labour in the gold mines of Kol... read more

Memoir of a Wellington childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, mainly in Oriental Bay and Roseneath. Includes material on Roseneath Primary School and Wellington College.

The inside story from one of our true music legends - pianist, teacher, arranger and bandleader, Doug Caldwell MNZM. In My Life In The Key Of Jazz, Doug provides a fascinating and entertaining journey through the world he knows so well - a place of high-browed auditoriums, and low and smoky late-night jazz clubs, a world of eccentric punters, fans and the musicians who made it their own. Through more than 65 years of professional performance Doug has worked with a veritable who's who of acclaimed musicians and entertainers includin... read more

Infantryman Bruce Robertson had a long war. A volunteer with the First Echelon, he entered Trentham Military Camp in October 1939, sailed for the Middle East in January 1940 and entered Maadi Camp near Cairo late the following month. While other early volunteers returned home on furlough in 1943 - many permanently - Bruce found himself overseas for the duration after being captured by Rommel's troops during the first Battle of El Alamein in July 1942. He would see out the rest of the war behind barbed wire in Italy and Germa... read more

A spiritual as well as a factual autobiography, this is a self-portrait of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, a 20th-century icon and controversial victim of the U.S. justice system turned spokesperson for the wrongfully convicted. Exploring Carter's personal philosophy - born of the unimaginable duress of wrongful imprisonment and conceived through his defiance of the brutal institution of prison and a decade of solitary confinement - this work offers hope for those who have none and serves as a call to action for those who abhor injustice... read more

The survivor of a difficult childhood and youth, Rubin Carter rose to become a top contender for the middleweight boxing crown. But his career crashed to a halt on May 26, 1967, when he and another man were found guilty of the murder of three white people in a New Jersey bar. While in prison, Carter chronicled the events that led him from the ring to three consecutive life sentences and 10 years in solitary confinement. His story was a cry for help to the public, an attempt to set the record straight and force a new trial. Bob Dyla... read more

Born in 1924 in a Dutch border town with Germany, the son of the local butcher, Bert ten Broeke experienced the invading German army at the age of 15. After the war his physical fitness led him to develop his athletic prowess, winning medals, but Holland's then improverished circumstances caused him to emigrate in 1950 to New Zealand.