This booklet is the third in a series on this train crash,
New Zealand's second-worst (behind the Tangiwai disaster a
decade later) as measured by the number of fatalities. It
follows two booklets by crash victim descendant Elizabeth
Coleman containing stories of people involved in the accident
and the movement to erect a monument near the site.
Another in a long line of railway nostalgia books, a
seemingly inexhaustible genre, Last Train To Paradise
approaches the topic from the social history side with a
chatty, gossippy style that makes for enjoyable reading.
What is it about Arthur Ransome - and John, Susan, Titty
and Roger of Swallows and Amazons fame - that excites the
devotion of hundreds of thousands of fans in Japan and
worldwide? Peter Dowden gives his personal take on the
attraction.
New Zealanders love their
huts, and they love the name for them: less than monosyllabic
in our dialect, it leaps off the glottus so fast that no time
is wasted and we can get down to real business, like lighting
the fire and getting the tea on.
