Wednesday, 25 April 2018

7.10am Chris Bourke

Chris Bourke is the content director of AudioCulture.co.nz, and the author of the books Good-bye Maoriland: the Songs and Sounds of New Zealand’s Great War (AUP, 2010) and Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964 (AUP, 2017). He will be discussing New Zealand music in times of conflict. In 2015 RNZ Concert recorded 20 songs written by New Zealanders during the First World War. They can be listened to and downloaded at the Farewell Zealandia page. 

 

8.05am Kate Hunter

Kate Hunter is an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington, where she is also the director of the Stout Research for New Zealand Studies. Among the courses she teaches is a social history of the First World War. With Kirstie Ross she co-authored Holding on to Home: New Zealand Stories and Objects of the First World War (Te Papa Press, 2014).

 

8.30am Adam Claasen

Adam Claasen is a senior lecturer in history at Massey University’s Albany campus. His book Fearless: the extraordinary untold story of New Zealand’s Great War airmen is a history of the 850 New Zealanders who were pioneers in military aviation (Massey University Press, 2017).

 

 

 

9.05am Jane Tolerton

Jane Tolerton is a Wellington historian who has often written about the First World War. Her latest book is Make Her Praises Heard Afar: the Hidden History of New Zealand in World War One (Booklovers Press, 2017). She set up the World War One Oral History Archive, with Nicholas Boyack, and interviewed 85 veterans, co-edited In the Shadow of War with Boyack (Penguin, 1990), and wrote An Awfully Big Adventure: New Zealand World War One veterans tell their stories from the interviews (Penguin, 2013). Among her other books are Ettie Rout: New Zealand’s safer sex pioneer, about Rout’s war years (Penguin, 2015).

 

9.45am Megan Hutching

Megan Hutching is an Auckland-based freelance historian. Oral history is central to her work: in the early 2000s for the Ministry of Culture & Heritage she interviewed Second World War veterans for a series of books about their experiences. Among them were Against the Rising Sun: New Zealanders Remember the Pacific War (HarperCollins/MCH, 2006), The Desert Road: New Zealanders Remember the North African Campaign (2005), A Fair Sort of Battering: New Zealanders Remember the Italian Campaign (2004), Inside Stories: New Zealand Prisoners of War Remember (2002), and ‘A Unique Sort of Battle’: New Zealanders Remember Crete (2001).

 

 

 

10.05am Christopher Pugsley

The author of many books on New Zealand’s military history, Christopher Pugsley also has a deep interest in the country’s early film heritage. How the moving camera captured the experience of the NZEF during the First World War is a central part of his book The Camera in the Crowd: Filming New Zealand in Peace and War, 1895-1920 (Oratia Press, 2017).

 

 

 

 

 

10.30am Alex Calder

Alex Calder, an associate professor of English at the University of Auckland, edited for re-publication the classic 1963 memoir by Alexander Aitken,Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman (AUP, 2018). Aitken was Dunedin mathematics student when he enlisted in 1915; his skill at mental arithmetic saved his life at the Somme. Throughout his service overseas he smuggled a violin in his kitbag, performing at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. After the war, he became internationally renowned as a mathematics genius. Short documentaries about Aitken and many others can be viewed at the NZ History website.

In 2016 RNZ Concert recorded the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra performing Gallipoli to the Somme,  Anthony Ritchie’s oratorio in tribute to Aitken.

 

 

 

 

10.50am Sarah Johnston

Sarah Johnston from Nga Taonga Sound & Vision discusses archival audio clips heard throughout the programme, and her work over the past four years accessing First World War related material.

Thank you to Nga Taonga Sound & Vision and Jane Tolerton for archive audio.