New zealand

Corpses, clues and Kiwis

Publishing loves a brand. Few authors of fiction create characters who reach this semi-divine status, but when they do, even death cannot part them from their fortunate publishers. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Bertie Wooster and James Bond are among those who have survived their creators’ deaths, thanks to the assistance of living authors. Now Roderick Alleyn, the ineffably posh Scotland Yard detective created by Dame Ngaio Marsh, returns for a posthumous outing with the help of Stella Duffy, herself a distinguished crime writer. It’s an inspired pairing — Duffy, like Marsh, is a New Zealander with a professional interest in the theatre. Marsh’s direct contribution to the book was small

Long-haul travel

For some reason, I decided to go to the other side of the world for Christmas. I may never do it again. Not because I didn’t like Australia (I loved it) but because it takes forever to get there. And spending 23 hours with your knees under your chin on a long-haul flight to the Antipodes will cure you of ever going further than Calais. When you’re flying economy it’s of paramount importance to choose the right airline. I tried four for size: Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Jetstar and Air New Zealand. Cathay Pacific flew me to Hong Kong. The staff were friendly and smart but, alas, the Boeing 777 was

Hacked off with the haka

Kingsley Amis said the most depressing words in the English language were ‘Shall we go straight in?’ — meaning no pre-dinner drinks. But for many of us it’s: ‘Tonight is the folklore evening.’ At any holiday resort in the world this signals a bloke with a balalaika and plump ladies in national dress giving it large with some traditional and intermin-able dance. Time to head for the bar. So let’s look at the ‘haka’, the preamble to any All Blacks rugby match, and now more or less any game on the current Lions tour. The Auckland Blues had knocked one up for their Lions game this week. It was called

Letters | 20 April 2017

Benedictine engagement Sir: Matthew Parris has missed the point (‘Give me the Anglican option’, 15 April). He compares Rod Dreher’s suggestion that modern Christians emulate the Benedictines with the retreat into self-imposed exile of groups like ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Beni Isguen community. The Benedictines did not withdraw from the world. They engaged with the fractured society of the Dark Ages, showing a better way through their schools, almsgiving and prayer. A number of recent books, including Tom Holland’s Millennium, have charted the astonishing role the monasteries played in dragging Europe out of barbarism. In Britain, the Church and its monastic orders set up many of the institutions on which

John Key’s real legacy is his lack of blunders

Imagine a Tory Prime Minister stepping down after nearly ten years at the top on his own terms. The budget was back in surplus, troublesome referendum results had been quickly forgotten, and the PM still remained overwhelmingly popular, with his party still sitting on around 50 per cent in the polls. No, it’s not the restless dreams of David Cameron, but John Key – New Zealand’s soon-to-be ex-PM, who unexpectedly announced his resignation earlier today. Arguably one of the most successful centre-right leaders in the world since Margaret Thatcher, Key has dominated New Zealand politics for the past decade. His National party has held near-majority government, despite a proportional electoral system that was meant to make such

Apples for our eyes

Apple Day, on 21 October, is a newish festival, created in 1990, by the venerable organisation, Common Ground. Intended to be a celebration of the apple, its purpose is also to raise awareness of the importance of apples in landscape, ecology and culture. All over the country there will be many revels where you can taste apple varieties, jellies, chutneys and drinks; try apple-bobbing, take apples from your own garden for identification by experts, buy apple trees and all sorts. These are charming festivities, much better behaved than the ancient cider-makers’ ritual, wassailing. I have never taken part in the wassail, but from a description in Pete Brown’s The Apple

New Zealand’s flag vote makes me proud to be both Kiwi and British

I’m technically 3/4 Kiwi and 1/4 British, although having lived in the UK most of my life, it doesn’t often feel this way. But when it comes to rugby, I support the All Blacks, and when I go walking in the mud, I wear gumboots, not wellingtons. So I’ve taken a vague interest in the fact that New Zealand has held a referendum about whether to change its national flag, but has now voted by 56.6 per cent to keep the status quo; that is, the traditional flag which features the Union Jack on it. I can see why this has caused so much tension and why it has divided opinion. After all, New

New Zealand

On my first night in Christchurch, I woke at 3.32 a.m. to what felt like an explosion. My bed was rocking, and a few things fell off the shelves. After my initial panic, I realised what it was: an earthquake, of course. The next question: what to do? Being an earthquake virgin, I had no idea if this was a big ’un or a small one — so I stayed put. I would listen to what was going on outside, I decided, and if people seemed to be panicking or moving, I’d join them. Fortunately the shaking soon subsided, so I resorted to Google. It was true. On Sunday 28

Two big hitters leave the crease

Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket captain Brendon McCullum and the journalist Hugh McIlvanney might not seem to have much in common but they both made the world a better, more joyful place. I sat up until the small hours a few of weeks back watching McCullum: it was his last Test, in Christchurch, against the old enemy from across the Tasman Sea, and his side had been put in to bat. McCullum has redefined what it means to be a batsman and for his farewell he wasn’t going to leave anything in the pavilion. He

I’ve discovered a new way to annoy holier-than-thou rugby fans

Some advice. Don’t watch the rugby world cup final with anyone too politically correct. My friend Tom and I were so busy arguing about the Haka that we missed the first try during the semi-final on Saturday. ‘I love a bit of primitive ritual’ I said, as the men in black became animated wood carvings that would make a missionary quake. ‘Er, I’m not sure you’re allowed to say that.’ ‘Eh?’ ‘I think you’ll find that word’s kind of you know…racist?’ ‘What, primitive?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Racist? But there’s white people doing it too.’ ‘Yeah but it’s a Maori thing, so you’re basically calling Maoris primitive. You’re meant to call it traditional.’ ‘But

Matters of life and death

‘Bait by Cartier,’ she growls as her priceless diamond bracelet is strapped to a piece of rope and dropped overboard in the hope it might lure a fish on to the line. She’s stuck on a boat with a group of survivors after the freighter she was aboard was hit by a German U-boat during the second world war. She was Tallulah Bankhead, playing Connie, heroine of John Steinbeck’s novel-cum-film Lifeboat, for Mystery Theater, the American radio drama series, first broadcast in 1950 and now replayed on Radio 4 Extra (Sunday). They just don’t make voices like that anymore. It had star quality streaked right through it. That deep husky

Young guns

The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles began proceedings with a report on the activities of our junior branch. These youngsters are not yet eligible to become drinking members, but they are chosen because of their unremitting hostility to vermin and their burgeoning enthusiasm for killing game. Young Charlie, the Nimrod of his generation, has been prodigiously active. It is surprising that there is a single grey squirrel still alive in Somerset. Any rat that comes his way goes no further. He is also mightily effective against rabbits and pigeons, which he enjoys scoffing, after he has skinned or plucked them. Charlie has inherited a .410: the fifth generation of his

Thrills and chivalry at the most civilised place on earth

If heaven is a place on earth, as Belinda Carlisle so wisely observed, then surely that place has to be Lord’s on a Test match Saturday. Celestial indeed, and a privilege to have been there for just a part of what was one of the most thrilling Test matches in history. More runs scored than ever before in a Lord’s Test, 40 wickets taken, three magnificent centuries, technically brilliant from Williamson, sage and resolute from the Cook of old, jaw-dropping and Botham-esque from Stokes and five days of extraordinary sportsmanship. There is no more civilised place to watch sport than Lord’s. I love the fact that it still trusts spectators

‘Another terrible thing…’: a novel of pain and grief with courage and style

Nobody Is Ever Missing takes its title from John Berryman’s ‘Dream Song 29’, a poem which I’d always thought related to Berryman’s strange sense of guilt over his father’s suicide. At the heart of Catherine Lacey’s novel there is another suicide that brings with it enormous pain and grief, that of the heroine Elyria’s adopted sister Ruby, six years earlier. This is a novel of extremes — to put it mildly — charting Elyria’s slide into a derelict state. It is a witty, knowing and lyrical work that takes as its subject the thoughts and feelings of a woman who has suffered more misery than most humans can take. The

Michael Seresin – from film noir to pinot noir

Michael Seresin claims, rather modestly, to ‘have no palate’, choosing instead to describe wine with light, colour and form. These are not your typical winemaker’s terms, but they make perfect sense given his unusual back story. Born and raised in New Zealand, Seresin emigrated to Europe in 1966 to pursue a career in cinematography. Movie buffs will know what happened next — Seresin, in his own words, ‘did really well, really quickly’, making a name for himself with a series of Alan Parker flicks: Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame. It was during this period that he leased a house in Italy — still his ‘favourite country in the world’ —

The case for decriminalising prostitution is overwhelming. Look at New Zealand

Every so often our politicians declare that ‘it’s time to prosecute men for buying sex’; most recently with Caroline Spelman’s call for men to make their views clearer about prostitution. I’m one of few men who’ll own up to visiting brothels and spending time with call girls. Alas – for those getting hot under the collar with anticipation – my time spent cruising red light zones was strictly professional: I spent most of 2008 photographing sex workers in New Zealand for my dissertation, which documented how the country’s decriminalisation of sex work in 2003 had changed the industry. New Zealand’s prostitution law reform sidestepped passing judgment on the ethics of

Sam Neill’s diary: Back in Blighty, remembering drinking binges of yore

I am back in the UK for work. Great time to turn up — after the grim, grey grind of the British winter. Here in Manchester, people stroll in shirtsleeves or T-shirts, though it’s still only 15 degrees. They are, in truth, dazzlingly white. Their semi-nudity strikes me as a tad premature, but then I’ve only just left my Indian summery vineyard in New Zealand via Bondi Beach. I’m here at the behest of BBC2, for a second season of The Peaky Blinders. If you didn’t see the first season, you should. And if you don’t … I know where you live. And having played Chief Inspector Campbell, I know how

Warning: upspeak can wreck your career

A few weeks ago, I accompanied my daughter to an Open Day at Roehampton College, where she is hoping to start a teacher training course in September. I enjoyed it — and was impressed by the broad mix of motivated young men and women who, if all goes well, will soon be teaching the next generation of primary school children. Towards the end of the afternoon, the co-ordinator said she wanted to offer a few tips about the interview process that would begin once all the applications have been submitted. It turned out she had only one main tip: avoid upspeak. She stressed the point vigorously. Indeed, her message for

Playing down Australia and New Zealand’s role in the Great War is shameful

Back in the 1950s my grandmother wrote her memoirs of childhood in Edwardian London, a story that ends in the summer of 1914, when she was 14. In contrast to the image we’re given of cheering men skipping to war, she recalls her father in tears at the breakfast table, lamenting that the politicians had failed. He foresaw total disaster (optimism runs in the family). She then finds that her brother has joined up, not out of excitement or glory but because he’s ashamed not to be in uniform; he survived, although broken by shellshock, and his elder son was killed in the next war. It’s clear from her recollection

Hurrah for Andrew Strauss

Andrew Strauss is a serious man and Driving Ambition (Hodder, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £18) is a serious book. It looks like most other sporting autobiographies: there are heroes, jokes and solecisms aplenty. Yet it is also the Bildungsroman of a determined bloke making the most of his talents. Strauss rejects the truism ‘You make your own luck’; but in his case, I’m not convinced. He matured as an adolescent when his contract with Middlesex County Cricket Club was threatened. Then he conquered mental frailty to make a career-saving century for England against New Zealand in 2008. There was lots of graft in between. It was his personality principally that turned