Seminar presented at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage on 3 July 2013
Coast is a novel from David Young after some decades as a writer of non-fiction, particularly in the field of history and environment.
Exploring the effects of two world wars on three generations of men from the same family, Coast is also a meditation on the power of landscape. The east coast of Kincardineshire, Scotland and the North Island’s Rangitikei coastline where a Scots community endures even today, anchor this story in psychological, as well as physical, reality. Told from the standpoints of the three related key characters, the narrative unfolds a male social history spanning much of the twentieth century. It embraces issues of identity, belonging and connection to place. Kin and romantic love, matters of class, the Depression, active service abroad – first on the Western Front, then through the air war in the Pacific – and of family life, reach out beyond Pakeha concerns to the circularity of history and the tangata whenua.
The question of how much the writer brings to his fiction from his previous historical endeavours and from his own life is explored in this talk. The author’s history of conservation in New Zealand, Our Islands Our Selves, his Whanganui River book, Woven by Water, and even his first book, Faces of the River, played a part in the genesis of this work. So too did oral and documentary historical research.
The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers
Crossing the lines: the story of three homosexual New Zealand soldiers in WW2
Reflecting on the value of social media as a history-research tool
Dissenting Voices – New Zealand and the South African War 1899–1902
Inside the Bubble
Kei roto i te miru: inside the bubble
‘Palmy Proud’? Audience and Approach in Writing the History of a Provincial City
Tamihana Te Rauparaha’s life of Te Rauparaha
Te Mana O Te Reo Māori
Unpacking the Suitcase
Māori women and the armed forces in WWII
Memorials, names and ethical remembering
‘Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance’
Wairoa Lockout: an oral history
Pūkana: moments in Māori performance
This Mortal Boy
100 years of the Tararua Tramping Club
The Hidden Women of the Public Stage
My Body, My Business
Ocean: tales of voyaging and encounter that defined New Zealand
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It is Free
Dark Histories
The Best Song Podcast
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
The Rest Is History
American Scandal