Music | Independent (The)
30 November 2020
New Zealand-born singer Lorde, 24, has teased fans with more information about a new album while announcing her book, Going South, inspired by her 2019 trip to Antarctica. The Independent’s Isobel Lewis reports.
The “Green Light” singer has…
General | Independent (The)
24 August 2020
Friends and strangers told writer, editor, and designer Laura Pitcher she was “crazy” to leave New Zealand after a four-month visit “home” to return to the United States during the pandemic. But the New…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
24 June 2020
The Jurassic Park star Sam Neill has been entertaining the masses during lockdown with his ukulele playing and ‘Cinema Quarantino Productions’. He talks to The Independent’s Alexandra Pollard about his new role on season…
Politics and Economics | Independent (The)
12 November 2019
New Zealand has passed a law to reduce its emissions in a bid to become mostly carbon neutral by 2050, Britain’s Independent newspaper reports.
The zero-carbon bill aims to tackle climate change by setting a…
Nature | Independent (The)
8 September 2019
Tourists have been banned from swimming with bottlenose dolphins in New Zealand in a bid to protect them from “being loved into extinction”. Chiaro Giordano reports for UK newspaper, The Independent.
The population of bottlenose…
Taste | Independent (The)
9 April 2019
Samoan-born New Zealand chef Monica Galetti was the first woman to become head chef at La Gavroche and now runs her own restaurant, Mere, in London with her husband. Galetti talks to Britain’s Independent…
General | Independent (The)
24 February 2019
“Picturesque Mermaid Pools in Matapouri in New Zealand have been closed indefinitely after human waste and litter were repeatedly found at the sacred Māori site, Joanna Whitehead reports for The Independent.
“The failure to…
Rugby | Independent (The)
12 November 2018
“The All Blacks looked a shadow of their usual selves in the first half but eventually fought back as Damian McKenzie and Beauden Barrett cut the deficit,” the Independent’s deputy sports editor Jack de…
General | Independent (The)
7 October 2018
Move over GDP, happiness is angling to become the metric of the future. Nation states have begun to compete in global happiness rankings and plan policy according to statistics of wellbeing, with New Zealand…
Nature | Independent (The)
18 July 2018
Kiwis for kiwi is a national charity working with community and Māori-led conservation projects to put a stop to the horrific decline of our national icon.
With the support of Old Mout Cider, they have…
Politics and Economics | Independent (The)
17 July 2018
“Unlike most other countries, New Zealand’s parliament appears to have realised that no one’s going to get anywhere by pretending to agree with, or make bargains with, Donald Trump,” freelance journalist Matteo di Maio…
Politics and Economics | Independent (The)
12 July 2018
New Zealand has been placed on rank #7 – tied with the Czech Republic and Malta – in this year’s Henley Passport Index, which ranks “all the world’s passports according…
Visual Arts | Independent (The)
4 July 2018
Auckland amateur astrophotographer Josh Kirkley captured a shot so unusual the cameraman can be heard gasping as he films clip. Kirkley describes his “shock” at capturing footage of the International Space Station (ISS) crossing…
General | Independent (The)
29 June 2018
New Zealand has been ranked as the second safest country in the world in this year’s edition of the Global Peace Index. Iceland was ranked the world’s safest place for the 11th consecutive year….
Nature | Independent (The)
24 May 2018
A new population of at least 700 blue whales has been found living between the North and South Islands. The gigantic marine mammals are genetically distinct from whales found in the neighbouring Pacific and…
Visual Arts | Independent (The)
20 May 2018
New Zealand photographer Bianca Duimel “is hoping to change the conversation around red hair with a powerful art project.” Sarah Young reports for The Independent.
“I was looking for children for…
Fashion | Independent (The)
11 May 2018
Vegan perfume lovers must not only avoid fragrances made with extracts of milk, honey, leather and beeswax, but also secretions from animals used to mark their territories, which are often used as fixatives to…
Taste | Independent (The)
21 April 2018
Latte, Americano, cappuccino … the flat white might be relatively new to the scene (and sound less glamorous), but it now amounts for about 10 per cent of UK coffee sales, according to The…
Rugby | Independent (The)
31 January 2018
The mastermind of the 2011 Rugby World Cup success, Sir Graham Henry, has returned to the side where he first came to prominence joining provincial side Auckland to assist head coach Alama Ieremia, the…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
27 January 2018
Tiritiri Matangi – a 75-minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland – is one of several offshore islands that New Zealand has turned into sanctuaries for its native birds. The Independent’s David Whitley visits Tiritiri…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
20 December 2017
The first footage of Peter Jackson’s fantasy movie Mortal Engines, an adaptation of Phillip Reeve’s novel, has finally landed,” writes Jack Shepherd in an article for
Writers | Guardian (The) | Independent (The)
15 December 2017
Like a couple of lab rats, professors New Zealander André Spicer and Swede Carl Cederström have subjected themselves to every conceivable test in pursuit of perfection, hoping to become better human beings, smarter, more…
Theatre | Independent (The)
2 November 2017
Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie are back, and will tour the UK and Ireland in March 2018 for the first time in more than seven years. The ‘Flight of the…
Taste | Independent (The)
9 September 2017
“Antipodean ales are on the up, with more and more becoming available this side of the equator. These are the breweries you need to know about,” brewer and author Nick Moyle writes…
Music | Independent (The)
1 August 2017
The Norwegian-Kiwi duo “Anna of the North is a product of heartbreak, and the recovery that comes after,” writes Roisin O’Connor in an article for The Independent.
“Anna Lotterud was working…
Taste | Independent (The)
17 June 2017
“Marylebone is certainly a nice place to be on a weekend morning – especially if the sun’s out – with its beautiful shop fronts and stylish eateries, it feels very civilised. Making it even…
Music | Independent (The)
7 January 2017
A Connan Mockasin song features on an Independent list of most-listened-to tracks the UK newspaper’s staff played the most last year on Spotify.
“Oddly, my most-listened to track of 2016 wasn’t from this year at all, but…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
19 November 2016
Wellington “is a small city and practically everything in the downtown district is in a straight line between the mountains that rise to the west and the bay to the east,” writes Christopher Beanland…
Society | Independent (The) | World Economic Forum
5 October 2016
New Zealand has been identified as the 13th most competitive country in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.
“Countries were ranked according to the “12 pillars of competitiveness,” which includes macro-economic environment, infrastructure, health…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
18 September 2016
”The vast majority of us lack the happy-go-lucky charm of New Zealand’s favourite writer/director,” writes Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent. She is talking about Taika Waititi, who currently is working on one of…
Fashion | Independent (The)
1 September 2016
Creator and star of hit American television show Girls, Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke are championing the unretouched precedent for Lonely Girls, a journal featuring inspiring women modelling underwear from the New Zealand-based Lonely…
Sport General | Independent (The)
22 August 2016
New Zealand computer scientist Craig Nevill-Manning’s Medal Per Capita table put this year’s New Zealand Olympic team near the top, placing fourth with 18 medals and a population of 4,595,700. That’s one medal for…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
19 July 2016
“In New Zealand, you’ll be interested to learn, there are more species of penguin than anywhere else in the world,” the Independent’s deputy managing editor Sean O’Grady writes in a preview of BBC Two…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
14 June 2016
New Zealand independent director Niki Caro is one of two frontrunners to oversee Captain Marvel, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The other possibility to helm the film is Australian Jennifer Kent.
Wellington-born Caro and Kent…
Music | Independent (The)
11 May 2016
Wellington-born mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew, 26, has won the Ferrier Loveday Song Prize for her performance of Hugo Alfvén’s “Skogen sover” and Hugo Wolf’s “Nimmersatte Liebe”. According to the Independent’s Michael Church, who attended the…
Taste | Independent (The)
7 March 2016
With their “Zingy “sauv blanc”, rich flat-white coffee and citrusy hops which now flavours British craft beers, “Kiwis have been making much more impact on our tastes than simply supplying lamb and butter,” as…
General | Independent (The)
7 February 2016
New Zealand is the country with the second highest rate of charitable donations as a percentage gross domestic product (GDP) according to a new report released by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).
Charitable giving by…
Science/Tech | Independent (The)
1 February 2016
Beatrice Tinsley, “one of the least acknowledged – and most original – thinkers in astronomy is being acknowledged by Google Doodle”, writes Jess Staufenberg in an article for The Independent.
The Doodle on Google’s…
Film & TV | Independent (The)
31 January 2016
“It’s been almost three years since Top of the Lake first aired and it’s still hard to shake the series’ sense of creeping dread”, writes Jacob Stolworthy in an article on The Independent.
Lead actress…
Film & TV | Independent (The) | Sundance Film Festival
26 January 2016
Taika Waititi’s new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a dramatisation of Barry Crump’s 1986 novel, Wild Pork and Watercress, has premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Boy director Waititi returns with the road comedy…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
16 January 2016
Research for her first novel Jakob’s Colours took British writer Lindsay Hawdon and her two young sons to the Land of the Long White Cloud and its fragrant lavender fields, reports the Independent.
Hawdon writes…
Visual Arts | Independent (The)
30 November 2015
For an artist, Simon Denny has an unusually agile grasp of corporate jargon, according to the Independent. Discussing his forthcoming Serpentine Sackler Gallery exhibition in London, Products for Organising, the 33-year-old New Zealander’s chat…
Design | Independent (The)
9 November 2015
New Zealand-born designer Thomas Pavitte is taking a minimalist approach to the current craze for adult colouring books, requiring his readers to draw the images themselves and turning dot-to-dot drawing into an art form.
Pavitte…
Writers | Independent (The)
5 August 2015
One of three debut writers on the Man Booker longlist, 35-year-old Anna Smaill will be unfamiliar to all but the most avid reader of contemporary fiction: her previous publication is a volume of poetry,…
Taste | Independent (The)
30 July 2015
New Zealand chef Anna Hansen, 45, who worked with Michelin-starred Fergus Henderson and fusion expert Peter Gordon before opening her own London restaurant, The Modern Pantry, talks with the Independent about music to make…
Rugby | Independent (The)
29 June 2015
The second most-capped All Black of all time tells the Independent how illustrating children’s books helps keep him grounded before big games, like the forthcoming defence of the World Cup.
Mealamu, 36, one of the…
Film & TV | Guardian (The) | Independent (The)
21 April 2015
Like many of the cast of BBC3’s new supernatural thriller Tatau, Shushila Takao is a New Zealander. She stars alongside British newcomers Joe Layton and Theo Barklem-Biggs as Aumea in the television…
Obituaries | Independent (The)
20 April 2015
The cricketing career of Richie Benaud – Australian captain and the first man to take 200 wickets and score 2,000 runs in Tests – was had a critical intervention by Timaru chemist Ivan James….
Watersports | Independent (The) | Radio New Zealand
16 April 2015
New Zealand brothers Sam and James O’Connor have helped Oxford University beat Cambridge in the annual University Boat Races held on the River Thames in London.
Sam, 27, (pictured left) who has competed in and…
Writers | Harper's Bazaar | Independent (The)
9 March 2015
According to the Independent, New Zealand author Anna Smaill’s debut novel The Chimes is “superb … intriguing, ambitious and strikingly written.” Harper’s Bazaar tips it for “book of the year.”
The setting is a dystopian…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
6 March 2015
One mother and two young boys are on a trip around the world to seven countries to find the origin of seven colours. The Rainbow Hunters, as the trio are called, are…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
19 February 2015
Over the coming six weeks, the world’s greatest cricketers will be zig-zagging across New Zealand. So for the cricket fan the Independent’s David Whitley suggests, that’s a fine excuse to disappear to the other…
Writers | Independent (The)
12 February 2015
New Zealand poet Anna Smaill’s debut novel The Chimes, reviewed in the Independent, is “dystopian fiction but not quite as we know it.”
“Smaill draws on her training as a classical violinist to create a…
New Zealand | Independent (The)
1 February 2015
Before Peter Jackson and his film crew rolled into town, Mount Doom went by the humble name of Mount Ngauruhoe, the fearsome volcano which forms the centrepiece of New Zealand’s Tongariro Alpine Crossing, the…
Writers | Independent (The)
12 January 2015
New Zealand author Peter Walker’s latest novel Some Here Among Us is “an absorbing, ethereal meditation into how the passage of time opens us up”, Peter Carty writes in a review of the book…
Film & TV | Guardian (The) | Independent (The) | Telegraph (The)
16 December 2014
Upon its release in Britain, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was met with great enthusiasm, with UK newspapers agreeing the New Zealand director has completed his trilogy with verve.
“Jackson’s…