Such Absolute Beginners

by Ian Cross

Journalist, author, and broadcaster Ian Cross has made many splashes in New Zealand's small pond and in this rich and rewarding memoir he reveals much of his life that would easily elude any would-be biographer: The bizarre troubles he and another young journalist fell into in Panama under the direction of an older New Zealander who turned out to have been a British intelligence agent and his implication in gun-running. How a journalistic fellowship at Harvard University could turn his life upside down and have him write The God Boy, a novel that has been in print for fifty years and was recently published again by Penguin, this time in its Classics series as 'a masterpiece'. His innovation as editor of the Listener. His dogged pursuit of funding to recompense authors for the library use of their work; over twenty-four years the returns have amounted to twenty-two million dollars. His years with the country's single television channel, his misadventures as Chairman of Broadcasting trying to save television from becoming hopelessly dysfunctional and, in 1981, facing demands to ban its coverage of rugby during the Springbok tour

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Ian Robert Cross, CMG, was a novelist, journalist and administrator, and has contributed significantly to New Zealand letters. His first novel, The God Boy, was released in 1957 to critical acclaim. Later novels are The Backward Sex (1959), After ANZAC Day (1961) and The Family Man (1993). He also wrote two memoirs The Unlikely Bureaucrat (1988) & Such Absolute Beginners. (2007)

Cross was the first recipient of the Burns Fellowship at Otago University. (1959)

In 1973 he became editor of the New Zealand Listener, a position he held for four years.

Ian Cross died in a Kapiti Coast rest home. His wife Tui had died a month earlier.