When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.

Those who look back on pre European life as a dreamtime of aroha(affection) and harmony ignore that fact that in realty it was brutish and short. King also pointed out that Maori cruelty to other Maori during the Muskets Wars and the invasion of the Chatham Islands was far harMichael Kingr and less humane than the results of British colonisation. He was raised in a largely Irish Catholic community in the seaside area of Paremata Wellington.

Michael King OBE (15 December 1945 – 30 March 2004) was a New Zealand popular historian author and biographer.