By ARNOLD PICKMERE

The death in a car fire of author and historian Michael King and his second wife, Maria Jungowska, was a dark end for a man who in most respects seemed at the zenith of his career as a writer and historian.

His Penguin History of New Zealand had become a publishing sensation, selling like no other New Zealand history.

He was an inaugural winner of the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement last October. That put a welcome $60,000 in the pocket of an often-impoverished author who, as Helen Clark put it, had "established a formidable reputation as a chronicler of the history of New Zealand and its peoples". The Herald named him New Zealander of the Year for 2003.

Casting a shadow over such recognition was the 58-year-old's painful battle against throat cancer, requiring chemotherapy which he described as "the most unpleasant thing that's ever happened to me".

Michael King was born in Wellington and grew up at Paremata, on the Porirua Harbour, attending Catholic schools in Plimmerton, Auckland and the Hutt Valley.

His BA majoring in English and history at Victoria University was followed by a move to Hamilton, working for the Waikato Times as a journalist and gaining an MA at the University of Waikato.

His early writing encompassed many Maori subjects, starting with Moko: Maori Tattooing in the Twentieth Century in 1972.

At times the notion of a Pakeha writing about Maori history was criticised. He was, some reviewers suggested, culturally removed from his subject.

King's response was characteristically straightforward at the publication of his Maori: A Social and Photographic History in 1983. He agreed he was culturally removed from his subject.

"But I look at it this way. At the moment if Pakeha were not writing about Maori history then it would not be written about at all."

He saw remaining in his role as an observer rather than a participant as no bad thing - and traditionally the role of the historian. He had instead extracted the evidence and information in his book from people who were participants.

King did conduct Maori workshops to encourage Maori writers and encouraged other Maori authors by helping in the editing and publishing of their work.

But in well over 30 books - some jointly written, produced or edited with others - he covered an extensive array of subjects, from Being Pakeha, to the Rainbow Warrior, the Moriori, and from New Zealanders at war to An Inward Sun: The World of Janet Frame in 2002.

What drove him? Partly, he told the Herald's Tim Watkin last December, the conviction that "you can't understand your country and your culture unless you know its history".