It's possible that Ewan McGregor never saw himself as a writer or historian. It's just that time caught up on him.
Thus appears The Price of Success, a history of Hawke's Bay and East Coast stock and station firm Williams and Kettle, published late last year and possibly headed for a second print.
It's the retired 74-year-old Central Hawke's Bay farmer, former Federated Farmers provincial president, Harbour Board and Regional Council member's fourth book, sparked by what was effectively his first, a Hawke's Bay A&P Show book commissioned by the Hawke's Bay A&P Society for its 150th anniversary in 2013.
There's been a family history, based on Kopanga Station and published in 2014, and a biography with A&P society past-president and now patron Hamilton Logan.
Simply, the man loves it, and admits through the writing, and filling gaps in Hawke's Bay's pastoral history, he is reliving the childhood he had growing up on the Hautope settlement block his father drew after World War II.