Heritage week .. now there's an occasion we can all feel ambivalent about. Just to throw a historian in among the pigeons, try James Belich. He's a punchy fellow and it's well worth priming yourself for the book by listening to his interview with Kim Hill. He "fingers" the settlement boom as "something like the Mongol invasions." Ouch. Not that Belich is particularly out to trash the whities, I hasten to add. That's just him dropping a bomb in passing. His main passion is in putting "colour and richness and culture and fervour and frenzy back into the history of the English speakers." He certainly does that.

 

PC