Historian Michael King and wife killed in car crash

8.55am

Historian, journalist, teacher and author Michael King died with his wife Maria Jungowska in a fiery car crash near Maramarua,south of Auckland, yesterday.

Dr King was 58.

Michael King was born in Wellington on December 15, 1945. He grew up on the Pauatahanui arm of Porirua Harbour and was educated at Catholic schools in Plimmerton, Auckland and the Hutt Valley.

He majored in history and English at Victoria University and graduated with a BA in 1967. He then moved to Hamilton to work for the Waikato Times and to study for an MA at the University of Waikato.

He left Hamilton to teach journalism at Wellington Polytechnic in 1972 and became a full-time writer in 1975. His first book, a collaboration with Marti Friedlander on Maori tattooing, was published in 1972. His television documentary series Tangata Whenua went to air in 1974 and won a Feltex Award in 1975.

For 10 years he concentrated mainly on writing Maori history in partnership with Maori, becoming the first professional historian to work in this field. His biographies of Te Puea Herangi and Whina Cooper, and his prize-winning Maori: a Photographic and Social History, were published during those years.

He was awarded his doctorate in history by the University of Waikato in 1978.

In the 1980s, Dr King also began to write about wider New Zealand history, and his ground-breaking Being Pakeha was the first book to examine the Pakeha ingredients of New Zealand society and culture.

He won further awards, including a Wattie Book of the Year prize for his book, Moriori, published in 1989.

In 1988, he was awarded an OBE for services to New Zealand Literature.

Dr King devoted much of the 1990s to literary biography through his books on the lives of Frank Sargeson (1995) and Janet Frame (2000). He has written or edited 34 books.

Dr King was recognised in 2003 alongside fellow authors Janet Frame and Hone Tuwhare and presented with the inaugural Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement. Each received $60,000.

Announcing the awards Prime Minister Helen Clark noted Dr King had established a formidable reputation as a chronicler of the history of New Zealand and its peoples.

At the time of the awards he told NZPA it was very difficult to make a living as a writer in New Zealand.

"For most of us, if we manage to stay in the business of authorship we just manage to break even. There would be no possibility during my life of putting anything away such as a superannuation fund. Therefore to have a chunk of money to put aside in one's 'middle years' is an enormous help."

Dr King's The Penguin History of New Zealand, published last October, was intended to complement and expand upon Sir Keith Sinclair's landmark 1959 history of New Zealand.

The historian began eight weeks of chemotherapy for throat cancer the day the history was released in bookshops.

Ten days after its publication, Penguin Books (NZ) sold out its entire 10,000 copy run and booksellers struggled to keep up with demand.

Interviewed at the time, Dr King said his favourite definition of history is that of Dutch historian Pieter Geyl -- history is an argument without end.

Dr King acknowledged it was "inescapable" that any history of New Zealand was also a history of race relations.

"In a very real sense we're still what we were in 1840," he said.

"While we are many things, we are still a bi-cultural society. I say that while recognising we are also a multi-cultural society.

"I do think New Zealand has avoided the worse excesses of racial and cultural chauvinism that have been seen in other countries."

"Most New Zealanders, whatever their cultural backgrounds, are good-hearted, practical, commonsensical and tolerant... they are as sound a basis as any for optimism about the country's future, and I think on the whole they are."

Michael King embodied much of the latter.

He is survived by a son and daughter from his first marriage.

Last December, Dr King was named the New Zealand Herald's New Zealander of the Year.

- NZPA