Alison Ann Trotter ONZM: 23 January 1932-14 July 2022.

• Date: 01 September 2022
• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Author: McGibbon, Ian

New Zealand lost one of its leading historians and the NZIIA one of its stalwart supporters with the recent passing of Professor Ann Trotter.

Born in Hawera, where her father was general manager of the local farmers' cooperative and a farmer in his own right, Ann numbered among her siblings businessman Sir Ron Trotter; one of her two sisters, Judith, had a distinguished career in the foreign service.

Ann's education began at Hawera Main School. Her high school years were spent as a boarder at St Cuthbert's College in Epsom, Auckland; she was head girl in 1949. She then went to the University of Otago, graduating with an MA before undertaking a year-long teacher's training course in 1954. She left on an extended OE in the following year, sustaining herself with a number of teaching assignments.

Returning to New Zealand in 1959, Ann took a position at Epsom Girls' Grammar School, teaching history and social studies. Her advent was welcomed by the pupils. 'She was a modern, with it, a vibrant, wonderful woman who really knew her stuff', one of them later recalled. 'She was an amazing lady and we hero-worshipped her.' Another, Helen Clark, who was later to become New Zealand's second woman prime minister, extolled her as one of two women who influenced her during her school years and expressed her good fortune in having someone 'who talked of Vietnam'.

By 1968 Ann had real prospects of being made headmistress, but her focus had shifted. She abandoned school-teaching to undertake further academic study in the field of Asian history in London. With the assistance of a British Council grant, she completed an MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In 1969 Dr Ian Nish, on his way to renown as a diplomatic historian of Japan...