Burdon: A Man of Our Time

by Edmund Bohan

It would be easy to make assumptions about someone like Philip Burdon. The product of a long line of landed gentry going back to the fourteenth century, and of well-heeled pilgrims on Canterbury’s First Four Ships, brought up and educated as one of South Canterbury's privileged landowners, a distinguished old boy of Christ's College – and a self-made multimillionaire to boot. Burdon might appear to be the archetypal New Zealand Anglocentric conservative.The truth is very different. This man is also a passionate republican, a businessman with an acute social conscience, a liberal politician who fought relentlessly against the right-wing ideologues of his own National Party, and not only slowed their extremist free-market reforms but convinced his caucus that this philosophy must wear a human face.As Minister of Trade Negotiations, he steered New Zealand through the labyrinth of GATT reforms that made up the Uruguay Round, oversaw a tremendous expansion of New Zealand's trading links into the Middle East, Asia and south and Central America, and championed the cause of regional economic development in the Pacific-Asia area. And, especially through the Asia 2000 Foundation, he has striven for multi-racial harmony and to encourage New Zealand's Asian community to take a full part in this country’s public affairs.But this is much more than the biography of a complex and interesting man. Critically acclaimed historian Edmund Bohan has also created a fascinating, lively and important portrait of an extraordinary period in New Zealand's history.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

An accomplished biographer and novelist, Bohan was a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 1995 and again in 1999. He has published six other historical novels including in the Inspector O’Rorke series The Opawa Affair, The Dancing Man, The Matter of Parihaka and The Irish Yankee.

An honours graduate from the University of Canterbury, Bohan has also written and published historical non-fiction, radio talks, short stories and numerous articles. For 25 years he was one of New Zealand’s most successful singers in Britain.