Gordon McLauchlan has been assiduously reading New Zealand history, biography and fiction for more than fifty years and for most of that time he's been writing professional commentaries on the nation and its affairs in magazine articles, newspaper columns and books. He knows New Zealand as intimately and affectionately as anyone alive and has set out in this book to provide for the gereal reader a historical narractive that is personal and colourful, and stamped with the authority of a lifetime of deep interest.
