Tag Archives: Guardian (The)

Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received

Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received

New Zealand author Meg Mason’s “moving novel”, Sorrow and Bliss, “about mental illness and sisterly love finds hilarity and wisdom in anguish, without ever diminishing pain”, Clare Clark writes in a review for The…

Jenny McGee Resigns from NHS Citing Disrespect

Jenny McGee Resigns from NHS Citing Disrespect

Invercargill-born nurse Jenny McGee, who cared for Boris Johnson when he was gravely ill with Covid-19, says she has handed in her resignation, such is her disillusionment with the “lack of respect” shown by…

Ten of the Best from The Chills Back Catalogue

Ten of the Best from The Chills Back Catalogue

Dunedin-formed band The Chills is releasing a new album, Scatterbrain. To celebrate, The Guardian counts down 10 of their top songs. “A singular band, The Chills are difficult to stylistically define because their diverse…

Actor Kerry Fox Looks Back at Life in Lower Hutt

Actor Kerry Fox Looks Back at Life in Lower Hutt

New Zealander Kerry Fox, the star of Shallow Grave and Intimacy looks back at her Lower Hutt childhood, driving at 15, her parents disco dancing and an Abba fan club in her shed. “The highlight…

How to Become a Tennis No 1 by Anthony Wilding

How to Become a Tennis No 1 by Anthony Wilding

In the 14 May 1912 edition of The Guardian newspaper, champion New Zealand tennis player Anthony Wilding’s book, On the Court and Off, was reviewed. That article is republished 109 years on, as part…

Family First for All Black Great Dan Carter

Family First for All Black Great Dan Carter

Former All Black fly-half Dan Carter “recalls his torturous relationship with the World Cup and reflects on a family-filled retirement” in an interview with Guardian rugby union writer, Michael Aylwin. Do Carter’s three boys have…

Biden Backs NZ’s Stance Against Online Extremism

Biden Backs NZ’s Stance Against Online Extremism

The United States “will join the Christchurch Call to Action” to stamp out violent extremism online, the White House has said, two years after the Trump administration declined to do so. The Biden administration spokeswoman…

Scrabble King Nigel Richards a Great Enigma

Scrabble King Nigel Richards a Great Enigma

With the Australian Scrabble Championships held over Easter weekend, The Guardian’s Emma Kemp profiled both young and old players competing for the title. When the name of world champion New Zealander Nigel Richards is…

Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors

Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors

The mentor to some of Britain’s top performers believes the best acting comes from a childhood sense of playfulness – and is fraught with danger, David Jays reports for The Guardian. Defining the core…

More to New Zealand White Wine than Sauvignon Blanc

More to New Zealand White Wine than Sauvignon Blanc

“You have only to look at the way the Kiwis have handled Covid to see why their wine industry is such a success: clear, focused and decisive,” Guardian wine critic Fiona Beckett writes. And,…

Spectacularly Good Dan Carter Calls it Quits

Spectacularly Good Dan Carter Calls it Quits

“News of Dan Carter’s retirement sends me back to that match, the second Test against the British and Irish Lions at Wellington in 2005, the greatest he ever played. Watching it…

All Blacks Face Hosts in Blockbuster ‘23 Cup Opener

All Blacks Face Hosts in Blockbuster ‘23 Cup Opener

“The 2023 Rugby World Cup will open on a Friday night in Paris when France, the hosts, take on New Zealand, at the very least the sport’s most famous team, and usually its best….

What If the UK Had Shut as Quickly as NZ?

What If the UK Had Shut as Quickly as NZ?

“The UK’s physical isolation sets it apart from its continental neighbours, but could its island status have protected it from the full horror of Covid-19, had it closed borders in early 2020, as New…

Singer Sarah Mary Chadwick Says It All on New Album

Singer Sarah Mary Chadwick Says It All on New Album

On the launch of her new album, Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby, New Zealand-born Melbourne-based singer Sarah Mary Chadwick “interrogates the forensic intimacy and specificity of her songs”. Jenny Valentish interviews Chadwick for…

Fifa Exec Sarai Bareman Understands the Margins

Fifa Exec Sarai Bareman Understands the Margins

From her time as a player on the Samoan women’s national team to becoming deputy secretary general of the tiny Oceania Football Confederation, few people are better suited to addressing the challenges faced by…

Emerging Actor Nathalie Morris Plays Teen Parent

Emerging Actor Nathalie Morris Plays Teen Parent

“Every few years, a tabloid story pops up about a teenager who didn’t know she was pregnant until she started giving birth. We never really hear about what happens next. The new Australian series…

Our Covid Response the Best of a Bad Year

Our Covid Response the Best of a Bad Year

Covid may have made 2020 a year to forget, but amid the gloom there were plenty of positive moments, with countries like New Zealand and led by women having “systematically and significantly better” Covid-19…

World’s Top-Ranked Team Shaped by Kane Williamson

World’s Top-Ranked Team Shaped by Kane Williamson

“After beating Pakistan by an innings and 176 runs in the second Test of a series they swept 2-0, New Zealand (a country with the total population around half that of London, and a…

Richie McCaw World Rugby Player of the Decade

Richie McCaw World Rugby Player of the Decade

New Zealand’s two-time Rugby World Cup-winning captain Richie McCaw has been named men’s player of the decade by World Rugby, Reuters reports in an article published online by The Guardian. McCaw, 39, who led…

Ocado Retail CEO Mel Smith Takes on M&S

Ocado Retail CEO Mel Smith Takes on M&S

Mel Smith is a plain-speaking, cheery New Zealander who joined online supermarket Ocado as CEO of Ocado Retail just over a year ago from Marks & Spencer, Harry Wallop reports in a story about…

Haere Rā Midnight Oil Bassist Bones Hillman

Haere Rā Midnight Oil Bassist Bones Hillman

Midnight Oil’s bassist and backing vocalist, New Zealand-born Bones (Wayne) Hillman has died in Milwaukee in the US at the age of 62. His fellow band members said they were “grieving the loss of our…

Rocky Horror Creator Richard O’Brien Interviewed

Rocky Horror Creator Richard O’Brien Interviewed

New Zealand-raised Richard O’Brien, the creator of the cult Rocky Horror Picture Show is not going quietly into his 70s. O’Brien, who lives with his third wife, Sabrina, just outside of Katikati, talks with…

All Blacks Inflict Record Defeat on Wallabies

All Blacks Inflict Record Defeat on Wallabies

“New Zealand served up a Halloween nightmare for an inexperienced Wallabies side by romping to a record 43-5 victory in the Tri-Nations opener and claiming the Bledisloe Cup for an 18th successive year,”…

Comedian Rose Matafeo Shines Bright in Baby Done

Comedian Rose Matafeo Shines Bright in Baby Done

Directed by Curtis Vowell and produced by Taika Waititi, award-winning comic Rose Matafeo “is wonderful in irresistible film about parenthood”, Guardian Australia critic Luke Buckmaster writes in a review of New Zealand comedy/drama, Baby…

John Reid a Cricket Player of Uncontested Standing

John Reid a Cricket Player of Uncontested Standing

“ John Reid, who has died aged 92, was in large part responsible for establishing New Zealand as a respected force in world cricket. A superb all-rounder who was the captain and mainstay of…

Savage is a Moving Street-Gang Saga

Savage is a Moving Street-Gang Saga

“A pulse of vulnerability beats at the heart of Sam Kelly’s outwardly imposing but unexpectedly touching debut feature, Savage,” Phil Hoad writes in a review of the film for The Guardian. The film has…

New Zealand’s Glaciers Testament to Climate Change

New Zealand’s Glaciers Testament to Climate Change

New research has found extreme melting of New Zealand’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely due to human-caused global heating, Graham Readfearn reports for The Guardian. Twice a year, glaciologist Lauren…

Robin Hammond’s Zimbabwe Images Show in France

Robin Hammond’s Zimbabwe Images Show in France

New Zealand-born Robin Hammond is one of ten photojournalists whose work is currently on show at Fondation Carmignac’s newly opened private museum on Porquerolles island, France. Fondation Carmignac is exhibiting each photographer’s work in…

Judith Collins Named National Party’s New Leader

Judith Collins Named National Party’s New Leader

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, widely known for her exhortations to kindness and compassion, will face Judith Collins – a combative, tough-talking conservative lawmaker who styled herself after Margaret Thatcher – in the country’s general…

The Beths Brand With Self-Doubt

The Beths Brand With Self-Doubt

When The Guardian’s Brodie Lancaster’s video call connects with Auckland songwriter Elizabeth Stokes, he writes that he realises she’s opted for an audio-only chat and switches his camera off too. It’s the kind of…

Oldest Surviving Photograph of Māori Discovered

Oldest Surviving Photograph of Māori Discovered

The oldest surviving photograph of a Māori person, a picture of Hemi Pomara, has been discovered in the National Library of Australia, an historical “scoop” being lauded on both sides of the Tasman. Eleanor…

Countdown First in the World, Period

Countdown First in the World, Period

Shoppers at New Zealand supermarket chain, Countdown will no longer see euphemistic language like “sanitary” or “feminine hygiene” products to describe pads, tampons and menstrual cups after the chain said it would be the…

One-Off Jonah Lomu Broke Barriers and Tackles

One-Off Jonah Lomu Broke Barriers and Tackles

It is exactly 25 years since Jonah Lomu flattened Mike Catt to score at the Rugby World Cup, where the All Black transformed into a superstar, Paul Rees writes for The Guardian. “When Lomu arrived…

Todd Muller Plots Downfall of Jacinda Ardern

Todd Muller Plots Downfall of Jacinda Ardern

Todd Muller’s launch last week in the Te Puna rugby clubrooms was not flashy or digital; in one sense it was politics of the old school. But for those who listened to the long,…

Sam Cane is Ready for New Zealand’s Top Rugby Job

Sam Cane is Ready for New Zealand’s Top Rugby Job

Like former All Blacks captain Richie McCaw, who learned his craft on the pastoral planes of the Mackenzie Country, the freshly appointed Sam Cane’s rural background in Reporoa, Waikato has become a fundamental part…

Hilary Bracefield was a True Polymath

Hilary Bracefield was a True Polymath

“Writing on a wide range of subjects from Stravinsky to the poetry of her fellow New Zealander Fleur Adcock, my friend and one-time colleague at the University of Ulster, Hilary Bracefield, has died,…

James Shaw on Our Economic Climate Post-COVID-19

James Shaw on Our Economic Climate Post-COVID-19

Cheap, renewable electricity is one way of reviving economies and preserving New Zealand’s natural environment, Climate Change Minister and co-leader of the Green Party James Shaw argues in an opinion piece for The Guardian. Shaw…

Football Forward Katie Rood Embraces Veganism

Football Forward Katie Rood Embraces Veganism

“I have gone from five years of continuous injuries to five years with almost nothing,” professional footballer Katie Rood, 27, tells The Guardian’s Suzanne Wrack. The change? In 2015 the New Zealand international and…

When John Walker Ran the Forgotten Mile in 1977

When John Walker Ran the Forgotten Mile in 1977

Everyone remembers the cricket but few recall the day New Zealand running hero John Walker took to the track in Melbourne, Adam Collins writes for The Guardian’s weekly cricket email, The Spin. It started with…

Endangered Kea Image a Shot of the 2000s

Endangered Kea Image a Shot of the 2000s

Photographers working for UK newspapers The Guardian and The Observer pick their favourite moments from over two decades reporting around the world. A fleeting moment, captured by Murdo MacLeod, in the South Island features. “The…

Escaping COVID-19 Chaos in New York

Escaping COVID-19 Chaos in New York

It started with an ominous email: “We urge New Zealanders currently travelling overseas to consider returning home while commercial options remain available,” the foreign affairs ministry wrote.  For citizens of the nation at the…

Taika Waititi Takes on the Chocolate Factory

Taika Waititi Takes on the Chocolate Factory

Academy Award-winning director New Zealander Taika Waititi has signed a deal with Netflix to write, direct and produce two animated series based on the works of the children’s author, Roald Dahl, The Guardian reports. The…

How Our Space Industry is Causing Turbulence

How Our Space Industry is Causing Turbulence

Life on the Mahia Peninsula used to be quiet: surfing beaches, historical monuments, and good snapper fishing, Eleanor Ainge Roy writes for The Guardian. Then space came to town. Four years ago, Rocket Lab’s Peter…

Chief Censor David Shanks Tackles the C-Word

Chief Censor David Shanks Tackles the C-Word

When David Shanks presents himself at international conferences, his peers recoil slightly, Charlotte Graham-McLay reports for The Guardian. “I’d introduce myself as, ‘Hi, I’m David from New Zealand. New Zealand’s chief censor,’” Shanks says. “And…

UK Ambassador Laura Clarke’s Aim in Office

UK Ambassador Laura Clarke’s Aim in Office

In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Laura Clarke, the British high commissioner to New Zealand, writes about why the UK wants to strengthen its relationship with Māori. “The connections between the UK and New…

Bret McKenzie Speaks on the Oddness of Fame

Bret McKenzie Speaks on the Oddness of Fame

The Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie, 43, who is guest curating this year’s New Zealand Festival, speaks to The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay about his career thus far and the cost of compromise. Although…

Sky Shepherds a Vital Farming Tool

Sky Shepherds a Vital Farming Tool

Corey Lambeth, a New Zealand farmer, originally purchased a drone for photography, but he quickly realised the device had more practical applications. “I thought ‘I’ll just give it a nudge on the sheep and…

Housing Crisis Bites in Northland

Housing Crisis Bites in Northland

A 30 per cent  rise in people waiting for state housing in Northland is fuelling New Zealand’s “desperate” shortage in affordable homes, resulting in some families living in the woods, and in huts built…

New Zealand Launches First HIV Positive Sperm Bank

New Zealand Launches First HIV Positive Sperm Bank

The world’s first HIV positive sperm bank has been launched in New Zealand in an effort to reduce the stigma experienced by those living with the virus, the Press Association reports in an article…

Aldous Harding Holding Our Focus

Aldous Harding Holding Our Focus

New Zealand musician Aldous Harding is popular: she’s sold out shows for her tour and headlines London’s Roundhouse next month. Young women who present themselves as she does, daring you to turn away, are…

Happy Sad Grant Trebilco Opens Up in New Film

Happy Sad Grant Trebilco Opens Up in New Film

New Zealand-born Grant Trebilco, who lives in Bondi, is one of the five subjects of Melbourne director Genevieve Bailey’s feature film Happy Sad Man, which investigates how men, who represent 75 per cent of…

Scott McLaughlin Wins Bathurst 1000

Scott McLaughlin Wins Bathurst 1000

Supercars series leader Christchurch-born Scott McLaughlin, 26, claimed a maiden Bathurst 1000 title at Mount Panorama after a dramatic finish, the Australian Associated Press reports in a story published on The Guardian’s news site. Ford’s McLaughlin…

New Zealander Subject of UK Mental Health Exhibit

New Zealander Subject of UK Mental Health Exhibit

The Museum of Lost and Found Potential launches in London this week, marking World Mental Health Day with an exhibition that hopes to encourage empathy, action and even anger by showing what mental illness…

Chit-Chat Flows Easily in NZ but Does It in Europe?

Chit-Chat Flows Easily in NZ but Does It in Europe?

“In New Zealand, small talk flows so easily, a ceaseless background banter you become inured to and engage in unthinkingly. And it often goes so much deeper than exchanging shallow pleasantries,” Guardian journalist Eleanor…

Why Ihumātao Truly is a Piece of New Zealand’s Soul

Why Ihumātao Truly is a Piece of New Zealand’s Soul

“In a city that has destroyed or forgotten most of its past, fragments of Auckland’s deep histories still survive at Ihumātao,” history curator at the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira Lucy Mackintosh…

Joseph Michael Lights Up UN with Climate Messages

Joseph Michael Lights Up UN with Climate Messages

Auckland University of Technology artist in residence Joseph Michael lit the United Nations headquarters in New York last week with an immersive installation that featured images of an iceberg and the messages of six young…