Author(s): Tarling, Nicholas

Biography/Memoir

Nicholas Tarling is an historian of Southeast Asia who has pursued a variety of other interests as well. Known to many New Zealanders after nearly 30 years as a professor at the University of Auckland, he has also been a braodcaster, an actor, a critic and an opera buff. Drawing on letters and diaries, the author recalls, with at least something of an historian's objectivity, some of the people, places and problems he encountered - sometimes with pain, sometimes with pleasure. As a child in the 1930s he was described as a fair-headed cherub who could do no wrong'. A colleague in the 1970s remarked on his 'wisdom, low cunning and dry wit'.