Book Launch

May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand, in English, Māori, Cook Island Māori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language.

Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is evening time (sign).

May I specifically greet you: Your Worship Kerry Prendergast, Mayor of Wellington and your partner Rex Nicholls; Bishop Tom Brown, Anglican Bishop of Wellington and Mrs Dwyllis Brown; members and friends of the Wellington Club including President (for the forthcoming as well as the present) Dan Stevenson and your wife Prue; and last but by no means least, Graham Stewart and your wife Annie; Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.

My wife Susan and I are hugely pleased to be here this evening for the launch of New Zealand: Portrait of a Nation by Graham Stewart and register thanks for the invitation.

I have been asked to launch this new book, and just before I do, would like to make a few comments about this new book on New Zealand, of which I have had the launcher’s perquisite of a read already, and about the man who has done such a great job in compiling it.

Graham Stewart is a man well known to many people in Wellington and the Wellington Club let alone more widely.  He is the publisher of a significant number of New Zealand books, including being the designer of the published history of this Club, which was authored by Dr Wyn Beasley and edited by Lorraine Olphert.  Graham is also the author of a good number of books in his own right.

Graham’s last book, before the one being launched tonight was called Wellington: Portrait of the Region.  That book has been a bestseller, but I understand that this came as something of a surprise to its author and publisher.  Graham, I understand, had some 3,000 copies printed, thinking they would sell so slowly that they might constitute some kind of swansong and bring his innings to an end, so to speak.  In fact I am told that the book has had to have two reprints so far and has sold something like 9,000 copies!  One of the things that made the Wellington book so popular was its depiction of the city’s scenes, in both old and new photographs, giving a graphic sense of how the city has changed.

With this book tonight, Graham has taken that successful approach and applied it to many parts of our country.  Such is Graham’s skill and length of time behind the camera, that not only did he take several of the “now” images but, as the reader will see from the legends alongside the photographs also a great many of the “then” photographs as well. 

Graham is an Aucklander by birth and upbringing and started his working life as a photographer on that city’s daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald.

Arguably one of the most famous photographs he ever took features in this new book on page 68. It is one of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth waving to people gathered to meet her in Pukekohe in early 1954.
 
That photograph was taken up and published around the world at the time. It was adapted by New Zealand Post for a stamp in the 1990s and the image used by the BBC as the title photograph for, the four-part television series Queen & Country for Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee.  There are one or two other 1954 Royal Tour photographs in the book as well and to those many of us who have some childhood memory of that tour, the book will be a wonderful source of reprise.

Graham moved on from a role as Illustrations Editor on The New Zealand Herald to work with the well known New Zealand publishing company A.H. & A.W. Reed, before then starting a new publishing company, Grantham House, with his wife Annie.

Since establishing their Grantham company in 1985, they have published a great many books.  They have specialised in pictorial histories and in our country’s past in transport-that is railways, trams, buses, shipping - both navy and merchant including ferries, military and civil aviation and the people involved with each – the 1996 publication “From Rails to Rubber – The Downhill Ride of New Zealand Trams” gives an idea of the genre.

This latest volume is not only one of which not only Graham and Annie can be proud.  It does the nation proud, giving a most comprehensive picture of New Zealand, of yesterday and today, with an emphasis on the enormous development that has occurred.

Leafing through the volume, as I have been lucky enough to do in preparation and looking especially at some of the wonderful 19th and early 20th century photographs, reminded me of historian Professor Jamie Belich’s summation of colonial New Zealand in his book Making Peoples.  Professor Belich wrote as follows: “A booming, burgeoning neo-Britain, growing hysterically, tamed only historically. Love it, loathe it, or both; this was colonial New Zealand, and boring was the one thing it was not.’

The same lively spirit certainly goes for this book and that description provides a good platform on which to declare New Zealand: Portrait of a Nation officially launched.

I will close in our country’s first language Māori, offering everyone greetings and wishing you all good health and fortitude in your endeavours.  No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tēnā koutou katoa.