Fighting Talk

Sir Robert ‘Bob’ Jones — now New Zealand’s largest private office building owner in Wellington and Auckland, and with substantial holdings in Sydney, totalling in excess of a billion dollars — is a property investor, author and former politician, who has written fiction as well as books on property investment, selections of his newspaper and magazine columns, and reminiscences of former prime minister Robert Muldoon.

While at Victoria University of Wellington, he earned a ‘blue’ in boxing and contributed to a boxing column in the university’s newspaper Salient. A multi-millionaire, Jones earned his wealth through investments in commercial property via his company Robt. Jones Holdings Ltd. He founded and led the New Zealand Party in 1983. In 1989 he was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and in received the New Zealand 1990 Commemorative Medal.

Jones has published widely in non-fiction and fiction, and is an accomplished essayist. His novels include: The Permit (1984); Full Circle (2000); Ogg (2002); True Facts (2003); and Degrees for Everyone (2004). His essay collections include: Wimp Walloping (1989); Prancing Pavonine Charlatans (1990); A Year of It (1991); Punch Lines (1992); and Wowser Whacking (1993). Hi non-fiction tiles include: New Zealand’s Boxing Yearbook (1972 and 1973); Jones on Property (1977); New Zealand the Way I Want It (1978); Travelling (1980); Bob Jones Letters (1990); Prosperity Denied (1996); Memories of Muldoon (1997); My Property World (2005); and Jones on Management (2007).