James McNeish
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Sir James McNeish KNZM |
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| Born | James Henry Peter McNeish 23 October 1931 Auckland, New Zealand |
| Died | 11 November 2016 (aged 85) Wellington, New Zealand |
| Occupation | Novelist, biographer and playwright |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | New Zealand |
| Education | Auckland Grammar School |
| Alma mater | Auckland University College |
| Spouse |
Felicity Ann Wily (m. 1960; div. 1964) Helen Schnitzer (m. 1968) |
Sir James Henry Peter McNeish KNZM (23 October 1931 – 11 November 2016) was a New Zealand novelist, playwright and biographer.
McNeish attended Auckland Grammar School and graduated from Auckland University College with a degree in languages. He travelled the world as a young man, working as a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter in 1958, and recording folk music in 21 countries. He worked in the Theatre Workshop in London with Joan Littlewood, and was influenced by her spirit of socially-committed drama. He worked as a freelance programme and documentary maker for the BBC Radio's Features Department in the 1960s. He also wrote for The Guardian and The Observer. He spent three years in Sicily with Danilo Dolci, the non-violent anti-Mafia reformer, and wrote Fire under the Ashes (1965, London: Hodder and Stoughton) a biographical account of Dolci's life which is remarkable for its objectivity and clarity. He wrote some 25 books.
McNeish's writing has been the subject of critical acclaim both at home and abroad. Besides New Zealand, his books are set in Sicily, London, Israel and New Caledonia. He was described as "prolific" by the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. His book Lovelock was nominated for the 1986 Booker Prize.
In 1999, he was awarded the prestigious National Library of New Zealand Research Fellowship, allowing him to research the lives and friendships of five prominent New Zealanders who attended Oxford University in the 1930s—four of them Rhodes Scholars: James Bertram, Geoffrey Cox, Dan Davin, Ian Milner and John Mulgan. This multi-biography was published under the title The Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in exile in the time of Hitler and Mao Tse Tung (2003). In the same vein, The Sixth Man (2007) is a biography of another gifted New Zealander, Paddy Costello, who studied at Cambridge University during the same period and whose subsequent career in the Foreign Office was marred by controversy.
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