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Montana New Zealand Book Awards - Biography - 2008 finalists

The Montana New Zealand Book Awards are organised and administrated by Booksellers New Zealand, the trade association for booksellers and publishers.

The Best Man Who Ever Served the Crown? A Life of Donald McLean

Ray Fargher (Victoria University Press)
This monumental work of scholarship is the first full biography of one of the key actors in the drama of 19th-century New Zealand land dealing. It fills a gaping hole in NZ historiography, and will be an enormously valuable resource for future writers and researchers. Donald McLean was born in Tiree in the Scottish Hebrides in 1820 and came to New Zealand in 1840. His first government appointment was to the 'Protectorate of Aborigines' in 1843, and he was to have a major public role until his death in 1877, as Land Purchase Commissioner, Native Minister, and major landowner in his own right. McLean was highly respected by Maori for his knowledge of Te Reo and respect for rank and protocol, and was closely involved in land dealings in the Taranaki and elsewhere that still have repercussions today. Highly regarded by politicians and settlers for his ability to get things done, he was also denounced after his death for having failed to open up the King Country to settlement.

The Life and Times of James Walter Chapman-Taylor

Judy Siers (Millwood Heritage Productions Ltd)
The Life and Times of James Chapman-Taylor is the biography of a remarkable man. He was born in London in 1878 and died in Lower Hutt, near Wellington, New Zealand in 1958. It is the story of a man who chose architecture, design and house and furniture construction for his career. While it is told from a personal perspective - there is a great deal of his family life included in this book - architecture has presented the milestones in his life. When Chapman-Taylor meets a new client - inspects a site and proposes a plan - the author has examined the house design, followed the building process and finally looked at the house on completion. The 97 building commissions are individually titled, and included in the story. It is a chance for the reader to meet the clients, enter the house and as well, slowly get to know the workings of the mind, and appreciate the skills of James Chapman-Taylor. Later in his life Chapman-Taylor became a professional photographer and his images plus his house plans have been used, where ever possible to illustrate the book. Other aspects of his life include his Theosophical Society involvement, his Golden Dawn membership, his association and friendship with Dr Robert Felkin and his wife Harriot and astrology and the creation of astrological charts. His spiritual life is an important part of the biography and the influences of the Arts and Craft Movement, John Ruskin, William Morris and English domestic architects of the period are examined.

Waimarino County & Other Excursions

Martin Edmond (Auckland University Press)

A new work from a master prose stylist, Waimarino County is a book of essays described as ‘elegant discursions on themes of memory, words and travel’. Edmond has an idiosyncratic and utterly engaging way of writing that always draws on himself and his own often quite intimate experience, yet his work is never self-absorbed but turns outwards: to the past, to the landscape and the natural world, to other writers and artists, to journeys and distant places.
Description from the Montana New Zealand Book Awards site