Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
00:00:06:01 - 00:00:31:08
Speaker 1
Hey it's Matthew Cudmore. Welcome to Story Behind the Stone. Today we're joined by Jock Phillips, author and former chief historian for the New Zealand government. In today's episode, we explore the evolution of New Zealand's military identity, the profound pride and military traditions of the Maori community, and lessons from the 1980s anti-nuclear movement. We also discuss Jock's belief that history truly resonates when we use narrative to bring individuals personal experiences to life.
00:00:31:10 - 00:00:43:20
Speaker 1
Jock, thank you for the deep insight and storytelling that you bring to our understanding of the past and to our listeners. Thanks for attending and.
00:00:43:22 - 00:01:02:12
Speaker 1
Well, hello and welcome to Story Behind the Stone, a show where we talk service, sacrifice and story, connecting with people, changing the way the world remembers, and veterans commemoration and causes. I'm so pleased to welcome to the show today, Mr. Jock Phillips, who's tuning in from Wellington, New Zealand. Jock is a former chief historian with the New Zealand government.
00:01:02:14 - 00:01:09:15
Speaker 1
The general editor for Terra, New Zealand's national encyclopedia. Jock, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.
00:01:09:16 - 00:01:11:00
Speaker 2
It's a privilege to be here.
00:01:11:02 - 00:01:15:19
Speaker 1
We have lots to discuss to begin. How did you initially find your way into history?
00:01:15:19 - 00:01:42:00
Speaker 2
I had a father who was interested in history and who got me reading children's books about British history. So I used to read about medieval England, and eventually I went to England and sort of looked at old places and found the romance of history very appealing. Then I went to the United States to do a PhD, and it was the 1960s, a very exciting period of American life.
00:01:42:00 - 00:02:10:10
Speaker 2
And it turned my head around and I started to see the analogy between America's discovery of its own colonial background and coming to a sense of its nationhood. And I started to apply that to New Zealand. So I came back to New Zealand to teach American history. But I found that I was became passionately interested in New Zealand history and the parallels between American history and New Zealand history became very, very close to me.
00:02:10:10 - 00:02:37:20
Speaker 2
I ended up spending more and more of my time on a New Zealand history, and one of the things I had noticed when I lived in America was that the whole time I was in America, I was never in a male only situation. I always was in a situation of men and women. And when I thought about my life in New Zealand, I realized that my life had been very much in gender segregated groups, that I'd spent a lot of time with other men.
00:02:37:20 - 00:03:01:21
Speaker 2
So I ended up realizing that the gender roles in New Zealand were very different from the United States, and from Britain. So I ended up writing a book about a man's country, all about gender roles. And that got me into the study of war, because the two areas of New Zealand life, which were absolutely male exclusive, were war and rugby.
00:03:01:23 - 00:03:31:09
Speaker 2
And so I did a lot of work on the history of rugby in the history of war. I went down to the great National Library, where they had a wonderful collection of First World War diaries and letters. And no one had really looked at these, and I started reading them. And each day I would go down and read a different series of letters or diaries, and I got completely hooked about the personal experience, what the going to war, you know, was really like.
00:03:31:11 - 00:03:49:00
Speaker 2
And so that turned me into a kind of cultural military historian. I well, I didn't know about the battles, but I was really interested in how people responded to war and then on to how they mythologize war and how they what they made of war in subsequent periods.
00:03:49:01 - 00:03:57:07
Speaker 1
It sounds like there might have been a light bulb moment there. Can you bring it back to just one moment then that underlined for you that this was a career worth pursuing?
00:03:57:08 - 00:04:23:20
Speaker 2
Well, I do remember sitting in a bar in Boston with a group of Americans and suddenly realizing that I'd been five years in the United States and never been in a male exclusive situation. And I thought to myself, one day I'm going to explore this, and one day I'm going to write about the culture of masculinity and men in New Zealand.
00:04:23:22 - 00:04:25:05
Speaker 2
And eventually I did do that.
00:04:25:06 - 00:04:32:22
Speaker 1
Tell me a little bit about how you use narrative and history, how it's interwoven and how it impacts your readers.
00:04:32:22 - 00:04:58:22
Speaker 2
Well, I think if history is going to be meaningful to people, it's got to be a series of stories and it's got to bring the experiences, the feelings of individuals to life. So when I did the book on New Zealand men, I then went and did a little book of collections of a selection of the letters and diaries from soldiers from the First World War called The Great Adventure.
00:04:58:23 - 00:05:07:01
Speaker 2
I felt that you've got to make history meaningful at the human level. And that's always been my fundamental principle.
00:05:07:03 - 00:05:11:04
Speaker 1
Is there a story from that work that you'd like to share with us today?
00:05:11:09 - 00:05:37:18
Speaker 2
There's a very lovely series of letters written by one soldier back to his wife. He was desperately in love with her. He wrote every day. And his descriptions of what the Western Front were like. Wonderfully orchestrated and beautifully told. Well, he got very severely wounded, and when he was in hospital, he would ask every day to the nurse.
00:05:37:18 - 00:06:03:06
Speaker 2
Here's my letter from his wife arrived, and she realized that this was the most important thing of his life. And so what she did was, though lateness didn't arrive, so she sat down and wrote that and would read out her letters to him, and he died happy. And when he died happy, she then wrote back to the wives, saying what she'd done.
00:06:03:12 - 00:06:09:11
Speaker 2
One of those sort of human stories which the extremities of the First World War brought out. And people.
00:06:09:15 - 00:06:22:10
Speaker 1
I want to zoom out for a second to share, if you could, a little bit about how New Zealand looks at World War One and World War two and modern conflicts. How does the public in New Zealand look at those conflicts today?
00:06:22:14 - 00:06:46:05
Speaker 2
When I was growing up in the 1950s and the 1960s, war was absolutely central to New Zealand identity, and that was partly because New Zealand liked to think of itself in terms of the achievements of its men. So we were very proud of our pioneers, very proud of our rugby players, and very proud of our achievements in war.
00:06:46:07 - 00:07:24:05
Speaker 2
I was always told that we were the best soldiers in the world. While a lot of bunkum, of course every country thinks that. I think it was really the Vietnam War that forced people to think again about New Zealand's military heritage. And there was a fundamental revolution which eventually led in the 1980s to New Zealand refusing entry to American nuclear powered and armed ships and essentially arguing that no, a small country like New Zealand doesn't have to be the territorial of the Pacific.
00:07:24:05 - 00:07:48:12
Speaker 2
It doesn't have to go off and fight big nations wars. It can be a articulate presenter of the argument for peace and of an anti-nuclear world. So there's been a sort of huge revolution, really, in people's consciousness about the meaning of war. Interestingly, in the last ten years, attendance at Anzac Day events and Anzac Day is the day.
00:07:48:12 - 00:08:17:10
Speaker 2
When will you remember people who served in war? That was the day when New Zealanders and Australians landed on Gallipoli. April 25th, 1915. There's been a huge increase in attendance at those ceremonies, but what is interesting is that there are no longer people coming along to have a sense of pride in New Zealand's military achievements, but much more a sense of the costs and the pain and the suffering that war involved.
00:08:17:10 - 00:08:52:11
Speaker 2
So there's been a huge revolution really, about the meaning on war of war and recently a very great interest in what that experience was really like. And I've always said the First World War was actually the worst experience that New Zealanders have endured. And I think that's probably widely shared so that the exhibition at the Papa, the National Museum, about Gallipoli, has been the most popular museum exhibit in New Zealand history because it tells in very rich detail stories about individuals experience in the First World War.
00:08:52:16 - 00:08:57:09
Speaker 1
Do you recall your first experience visiting the exhibition after it was completed?
00:08:57:10 - 00:09:21:10
Speaker 2
I've taken a lot of people there, so they layer one after another by layer. I was sort of involved in providing a couple of guns for that exhibition, a machine gun, which my wife's grandfather and her brother brought back from Gallipoli. They'd taken part, used it in a famous attack on the highest point of Gallipoli on a bit.
00:09:21:12 - 00:09:36:00
Speaker 2
And my wife used to play on that gun when she was a little girl, pretended it was a racehorse and so forth. So that's now on display down to Papa. And I always take the grandchild down there to have a look at that gun and the story that's associated with it.
00:09:36:01 - 00:09:40:23
Speaker 1
When you're walking family and friends through an exhibit like that, what are you sharing with them?
00:09:41:04 - 00:10:09:16
Speaker 2
I'm interested in what their emotional responses. The interesting thing about that exhibition is that it was put together with, wait, a workshop. Who did these huge, great figures, some of them soldiers from Gallipoli, some of them nurses, some Maori. And it's been the some people have been critical of it because I said, what it does is elevate these people into great heroes larger than life.
00:10:09:16 - 00:10:32:09
Speaker 2
But my feeling has always been, that's not the feeling you have when you walk out at the end of that exhibition. I mean, at the end of the exhibition, people are invited to put together a little poppy and right on that poppy their sentiments. And if you look at the poppies that are left at the end in the sentiments that are expressed, they overwhelmingly never let this happen again.
00:10:32:10 - 00:10:45:10
Speaker 2
This was one of the worst experiences that New Zealanders have ever been through. So I don't think it's a it's a great pean to the triumph of Gallipoli. It's much more a sense of the terrible loss that was involved in that conflict.
00:10:45:11 - 00:10:58:03
Speaker 1
When you think about New Zealanders overall experience of war time and World War one. You've written two works separated by 25 years, The Sorrow and the Pride and To the Memory. What were those two books trying to accomplish and how are they different?
00:10:58:05 - 00:11:23:01
Speaker 2
I was interested in war memorials because I thought that they were a way of looking at the way people interpreted war. You know, the iconography, the language of the memorials spoke to people's feeling about war. And I thought by doing a history, one could see how those sentiments changed over time. So that was the basic idea behind those two books.
00:11:23:02 - 00:11:57:20
Speaker 2
The War Memorial is an international language. There's a very good book on Canadian war memorials. There's a lot of study of United States war memorials, particularly those from the Civil War. I was interested in what it says about the society's attitudes to war. And then one of the great discoveries to me was to look at the war memorials from the New Zealand wars, because in mid-19th century, there were pretty intense military conflicts between Mori and Europeans over 3000 people died.
00:11:57:22 - 00:12:28:13
Speaker 2
There were some big battles. There was some terrible losses of not only life, but also mana and land. As a result of that, and new Zealanders have tended to repress all that. So one of the fascinating elements to me was looking at the memorials to those conflicts and telling us what it said about how New Zealanders coped with dealing with what is their great civil war occurred at exactly the same time in the 1860s, as the United States at its Civil war.
00:12:28:15 - 00:12:42:08
Speaker 2
And as we know, it's taken a long time for for the United States to work through the long term effects of that civil war. And the same is true in New Zealand. And so the war memorials of the New Zealand Wars I found particularly interesting.
00:12:42:13 - 00:12:46:05
Speaker 1
What are some of the symbolism that you see in those memorials for that period?
00:12:46:07 - 00:13:22:13
Speaker 2
They change quite a lot. I mean, initially there were not very many memorials at all. People wanted to forget. It was such a painful experience that they they tended to forget them. The very first memorial that was put up in New Zealand, in fact, it's New Zealand's first war memorial, was actually put up in finery, a little town about two hours north of Wellington, where Ahmadi tribe was coming down the Wanganui River, and all the Europeans in Wanganui thought that they were about to be attacked.
00:13:22:13 - 00:13:45:12
Speaker 2
So a group of Maori in Wanganui, who were very tied into the European Community went up river and they reached the Maori coming down river, and there was an island in the middle of the river. So the two groups went on to the island. They drew a sort of line in the middle. It was it was not unlike, you know, what happens in a rugby game.
00:13:45:12 - 00:14:14:17
Speaker 2
You know, they blow the whistle. And there was a very, very fierce battle. But it's the result of that. The downriver Maori, the Maori who were tied into the European town of fallen, okay, the community of Following Hui ended up winning that battle. And the people of this woman who was so relieved they had been spared getting killed that they immediately put up a war memorial.
00:14:14:19 - 00:14:56:16
Speaker 2
And the war memorial shows a weeping woman. The text of it says, in honor of those who defended law and order against fanaticism and barbarism, you know, terrible, terrible words. But very expressive of the way, you know, European settlers in New Zealand thought about the conflict between Maori who wanted to claim back their land and themselves. You can see there New Zealand's very first war memorial is so rich in iconography and also so rich in terms of the meanings that you can ascribe from that memorial.
00:14:56:18 - 00:15:25:19
Speaker 2
And the interesting thing is that when it was unveiled, they brought in several thousand Maori from all around the North Island to look at the unveiling of this monument. And that was a quite conscious effort to say to other Maori, you help us fight on our side and we will respect and honor you and celebrate your achievement. The politics of war memorials are a very rich.
00:15:25:21 - 00:15:41:03
Speaker 1
When you fast forward to modern day. How do people of Maori backgrounds look at memorials that are still in place? Has there been any attempt at reconciliation, at modern interpretation, for people to better understand why it was made that way?
00:15:41:07 - 00:16:17:14
Speaker 2
Well, the interesting thing is that this memorial is at a little place called Park I today, which was the a market square where Mardy and Poppy, I used to trade. You would come down the river and they'd sell goods to local parks. Also it performed today was a monument to one of the early prime ministers, Parthia, Prime ministers of New Zealand, John Balance and in the 1990s there was a big Maori protest about land, and they all set up a camp at Pescatore.
00:16:17:15 - 00:17:03:22
Speaker 2
Now, interestingly, one of the first things they did was knock the head off the European prime minister, the white prime minister. They didn't touch that memorial even though its language was so offensive. And I think it was because all the names on that memorial were Maori. It was a memorial to those Maori had fallen, and therefore they respected it, and they didn't destroy it in other places where there were memorials set up to raise the European side of the New Zealand wars, such as in Auckland, there was a memorial put up to all the colonial forces who fought in defense of law and order against during the Maori War.
00:17:04:01 - 00:17:34:06
Speaker 2
They called them. Well, that monument has been continually defaced and attacked because it's an uncomfortable monument. One, a New Plymouth, was not only attacked, it was physically destroyed. It was a monument to all those Imperial soldiers who came and fought in the wars against Maori. And that has been destroyed. So there's been a huge amount of iconoclasm and destruction of memorials from the New Zealand wars, which Maori regarded as offensive.
00:17:34:08 - 00:17:45:14
Speaker 2
But interestingly, they've tended to respect those that are in some ways commemorate their own ancestors, even if they fought for, you know, the Europeans.
00:17:45:17 - 00:18:01:06
Speaker 1
When you think of service for Maori service members in past conflicts World War one, World War two, how do they look at commemoration? I've seen the haka performed to the men engaged, for example, striking examples of pride in service. How do they look at that?
00:18:01:07 - 00:18:21:09
Speaker 2
There's been a very long tradition of pride within the modern community about their own military traditions that were very focused on war. I mean, New Zealand is dotted with, sites, these these Maori fortifications, all around the country. And there was a lot of war before Europeans got here. So they were good at it, very good at it.
00:18:21:09 - 00:18:47:07
Speaker 2
And they won huge plaudits during the First World War and in the Second World War. They set up their own battalion, the Manie Battalion, which was regarded as being one of the preeminent battalions in the whole of the Allied forces. And Mardi had a huge pride in the achievements of the Maadi Battalion, where the efforts of the Maori Battalion have been commemorated and monuments.
00:18:47:07 - 00:18:53:10
Speaker 2
They still respect those places and treat them as sacred taboo site.
00:18:53:12 - 00:19:06:00
Speaker 1
Before we started recording, we were talking about the Kenya Terror, Fata and France. Could you share a little bit of the importance of looking why in New Zealanders military memory?
00:19:06:02 - 00:19:30:12
Speaker 2
Well, look in what occurred in the last week of the First World War, there was an option that was a walled town and on the in the east side of France, and there was an option that it could have been bombed from the air. And the New Zealanders said, no, that's going to create too many casualties. We'll capture it on foot.
00:19:30:12 - 00:19:56:19
Speaker 2
So there was a famous incident where the new Zealanders climbed up over the ramparts, and actually, the first person to climb up that rampart was a man who subsequently became a doctor. And he delivered me into this world. So I've got a personal relationship with one of the heroes of Kenya. You know, he became an obstetrician, and I'm here as a result of him, of his efforts.
00:19:56:19 - 00:20:28:23
Speaker 2
But the needle was climbed over the ramparts, and the casualties among the civilians were nothing like as great as I otherwise would have been. And as a result, the people of La Kenya have always felt a great sense of gratitude to New Zealand. There's a memorial at on those ramparts, this avenue to New Zealand. You know, there's a strong sense of obligation to New Zealand, and there's always, Anzac Day service at that location.
00:20:29:00 - 00:20:38:01
Speaker 1
I can only imagine what you were feeling when you visited looking what? You know, I was not aware of that personal connection. It's an incredible story. How different was that trip for you?
00:20:38:02 - 00:21:08:01
Speaker 2
I was interested in looking at the way the First World War had been commemorated in its monuments, and I went all around the Western Front and focus particularly, of course, on where New Zealanders had been remembered in those places. It was very moving, very, very moving experience for me visiting those sites just because the level of loss was acute and because I'd read a lot of the diaries of people who had described what they had gone through at those various places.
00:21:08:02 - 00:21:17:10
Speaker 2
I had read several diaries about people who had taken part in the There Larkin, WA event. It was a way of bringing history alive, I suppose, and it was sad and humbling.
00:21:17:14 - 00:21:27:04
Speaker 1
After so many decades researching this topic. Is there one area of your research that you really want readers to walk away with after having read your body of work?
00:21:27:06 - 00:21:55:17
Speaker 2
Let me tell you a story about a woman, a woman called Aid of Stayton, because it says something about the way war was being remembered. I mean, we think in New Zealand that war has been very much a male experience, and it has been the very essence of male identity. It was for a long time. My father always used to say, if someone had a good war record, they were a decent bloke, and if they had a poor war record, you never took them seriously.
00:21:55:19 - 00:22:20:18
Speaker 2
So it's been very central to male identity and my male culture. In 1910, a woman called Edith Statham joined a group called the Victoria League, which was designed to keep alive the memory of Queen Victoria and particularly her commitment to the Empire. And she set out to try to,
00:22:20:20 - 00:22:38:05
Speaker 2
make sure that all those soldiers who died in the New Zealand wars would be appropriately remembered, and she was responsible in the end, for about 20 different memorials all around the country to those who had died in the New Zealand wars.
00:22:38:07 - 00:22:39:21
Speaker 2
And she just had a vision
00:22:39:23 - 00:23:02:10
Speaker 2
she eventually she got a job from the government as the inspector of old soldiers graves. But, it was it was her passion that drove her. And, what was interesting about her is it initially she set out to document the service to the empire of soldiers who died.
00:23:02:12 - 00:23:24:14
Speaker 2
But one day she came across this mound in the churchyard and said, oh, those are Maori soldiers. We must have a memorial here. And she thought that the Maori were those who'd fought for the empire. It turned out they weren't. There were actually Maori who'd fought for their land against the Empire. And she had she was big enough to say, it doesn't matter.
00:23:24:16 - 00:23:26:07
Speaker 2
We still want to have,
00:23:26:10 - 00:23:47:07
Speaker 2
a memorial. And the memorial today says to those Maori heroes who died in the battles of the New Zealand Wars, so she came round to thinking that anyone who died in war is worth commemorating and remembrance. And it shouldn't just be a vehicle for one side and for the perpetuation of imperialism.
00:23:47:12 - 00:23:52:04
Speaker 1
What are some of the challenges and sensitivities that she was having to navigate at that time?
00:23:52:04 - 00:23:52:22
Speaker 1
doing such a thing?
00:23:53:02 - 00:24:03:08
Speaker 2
this was about between 1912 and 1940, and it was right in the period before the First World War, there was a great deal of jingoism and,
00:24:03:08 - 00:24:04:15
Speaker 2
imperialism and,
00:24:04:15 - 00:24:06:12
Speaker 2
strong feelings, as you can imagine.
00:24:06:15 - 00:24:13:04
Speaker 1
and her work, it spans the pre-war period, World War one. Does it continue up to the Second World War?
00:24:13:09 - 00:24:24:16
Speaker 2
Yes. She she actually continued to work. She worked for the Department of Internal Affairs, doing searching old soldiers graves and putting up memorials right through the 1920s and 30s.
00:24:24:18 - 00:24:32:19
Speaker 2
an unknown woman, really, but someone who I finally got an entry into the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, which I was delighted to do.
00:24:32:21 - 00:24:34:15
Speaker 1
You're working on a new book.
00:24:34:15 - 00:24:36:02
Speaker 1
Tell us about the new upcoming book.
00:24:36:04 - 00:24:38:10
Speaker 2
When I was putting together the book on,
00:24:38:14 - 00:24:57:01
Speaker 2
Zealand war memorials, I've put together a database, and that with the idea of that really came from Ken Inglis, who was the great Australian historian of Australian war memorials. And he put he had put together a database and I thought, well, that's a jolly good idea. So I put together a database of war memorials.
00:24:57:01 - 00:25:08:06
Speaker 2
And then I thought, well, if I'm going to do warm morals when we go round the country, why not include all war memorials? So I did, and I found that actually they were very, very interesting.
00:25:08:08 - 00:25:16:20
Speaker 2
to my astonishment, I found that there were about 100 memorials to the royal coronations of
00:25:16:22 - 00:25:17:13
Speaker 2
Edward the
00:25:17:17 - 00:25:19:05
Speaker 2
seventh and George the fifth.
00:25:19:05 - 00:25:42:19
Speaker 2
And many of them were in the form of band or tenders or swimming pools, but mostly completely forgotten as memorials. So I thought, well, this is a story worth telling. And then I found when I put the database together, that, to my astonishment, there were more memorials to Maori before 1900s than there were to par. Yeah.
00:25:42:21 - 00:26:09:08
Speaker 2
And I thought, that's an interesting thing, and discovered that, this was partly because I wanted to honor the all those Maori who had helped them, but also because Maori wanted to celebrate their own heroes in acceptable European ways. So there was a lot of memorials ceremony. So I'm doing a book now on other non war memorials and their meaning and their social impact.
00:26:09:10 - 00:26:10:13
Speaker 1
What do you think the future is
00:26:10:18 - 00:26:11:07
Speaker 1
monuments
00:26:11:07 - 00:26:12:05
Speaker 1
and war memorials?
00:26:12:11 - 00:26:13:07
Speaker 1
a country's history.
00:26:13:08 - 00:26:15:18
Speaker 2
I think probably the age of memorials
00:26:15:22 - 00:26:16:20
Speaker 2
pretty well over.
00:26:16:20 - 00:26:21:21
Speaker 2
A lot of the sentiments on memorials are quite offensive and give a very
00:26:21:21 - 00:26:23:06
Speaker 2
half hearted view
00:26:23:08 - 00:26:24:01
Speaker 2
of
00:26:24:03 - 00:26:30:22
Speaker 2
someone's achievements. And so what I would like to see is then being used as a way of,
00:26:30:22 - 00:26:33:03
Speaker 2
providing new interpretations
00:26:33:06 - 00:26:35:14
Speaker 2
of some of the heroes and the events
00:26:35:16 - 00:26:55:21
Speaker 2
that have been commemorated and finding a way so that instead of having these inscriptions which fossilize often in many ways quite offensive sentiments from the time they were put up, and now they can be used as a way of leading people into new engagement with the meanings of the past.
00:26:55:21 - 00:26:57:08
Speaker 2
So that's my hope. Anyway.
00:26:57:11 - 00:27:04:13
Speaker 1
Looking to the next generation, Jack, what advice would you give to someone that's considering pursuing a career in history or military history?
00:27:04:19 - 00:27:18:08
Speaker 2
my view has always been that you can't understand yourself unless you understand where you've come from and you can't understand the culture in which you grow up unless you understand what created that culture.
00:27:18:08 - 00:27:19:14
Speaker 2
what I hope is that,
00:27:19:14 - 00:27:20:17
Speaker 2
the next generation
00:27:20:19 - 00:27:21:07
Speaker 2
will
00:27:21:12 - 00:27:22:07
Speaker 2
find,
00:27:22:09 - 00:27:34:07
Speaker 2
history exciting and relevant and rich, and it will broaden this perspective on the meaning of their own life and what forged them and where they're likely to go in the future.
00:27:34:09 - 00:27:41:22
Speaker 2
It's a hard battle, you know, the numbers of people reading history now and the number of people reading history books is, is diminishing.
00:27:42:01 - 00:27:44:19
Speaker 2
But I think it would be a great tragedy if,
00:27:44:19 - 00:27:53:09
Speaker 2
the drama of history, the human story, the human richness of history and the larger meanings of history are lost and people's consciousness.
00:27:53:14 - 00:28:02:06
Speaker 1
when you think back to yourself sitting at that bar in Boston, what do you think yourself at that time would think of where you are today? What you've accomplished?
00:28:02:08 - 00:28:07:02
Speaker 2
I'm always thinking about the next thing I'm trying to do.
00:28:07:04 - 00:28:14:01
Speaker 2
And how inadequate it is. So, you know, you can't. You can't you can't live off what you've done in the past. You've got to keep looking forward.
00:28:14:04 - 00:28:15:17
Speaker 2
I've had a great time. I mean, I,
00:28:15:20 - 00:28:17:05
Speaker 2
I was involved in,
00:28:17:05 - 00:28:17:21
Speaker 2
setting up of
00:28:17:23 - 00:28:23:05
Speaker 2
the Encyclopedia of New Zealand on the web, which was a wonderfully, the most wonderfully
00:28:23:05 - 00:28:24:20
Speaker 2
exciting job I've ever done.
00:28:25:00 - 00:28:33:07
Speaker 2
I was helped in the field in the early years of the National Museum to Papa. I was on the team that helped to create the first exhibitions there.
00:28:33:11 - 00:28:45:21
Speaker 2
You know, I was the country's chief historian. And so I had a lot of the I know I've been very, very lucky and where I've ended up, and it's been great. And, I wouldn't have missed it for that.
00:28:45:23 - 00:28:49:21
Speaker 1
want to make sure that people know how to follow your journey
00:28:49:21 - 00:28:52:22
Speaker 1
and also hear news about your upcoming book. How can people
00:28:52:22 - 00:28:53:21
Speaker 1
find you,
00:28:53:21 - 00:28:54:18
Speaker 1
and support your work.
00:28:54:22 - 00:28:59:01
Speaker 2
Oh, they'd find me on the web. Obviously. I've got a little website and a New Zealand history job.
00:28:59:04 - 00:29:00:21
Speaker 2
NZ history job,
00:29:00:23 - 00:29:02:11
Speaker 2
echo.nz.
00:29:02:15 - 00:29:17:12
Speaker 1
Well, people will know where to find you. Jock Phillips tuning in from Wellington, New Zealand. We've had such a wonderful chat today. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing more about the body of your work. My goodness, I think we could fill a few more episodes with all the ground that you've covered throughout your career.
00:29:17:16 - 00:29:19:15
Speaker 1
It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today.
00:29:19:20 - 00:29:28:20
Speaker 2
Well thank you Matthew. It's been a pleasure from my point of view to.
00:29:28:22 - 00:29:41:22
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for tuning in. Story. Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Rise Across America Radio Network on iHeartRadio. Audacity and tune in to search for wreath.
00:29:42:00 - 00:29:43:01
Speaker 1
Thank you for tuning in.