THE BOAT THAT BROUGHT ME: The lively memoir of a diplomat, husband and self-confessed cricket tragic.

• Jurisdiction: New Zealand
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Author: McIntyre, W. David

THE BOAT THAT BROUGHT ME: The lively memoir of a diplomat, husband and self-confessed cricket tragic

Author: Nick Bridge

Published by: Wayfarer (an imprint of the Cuba Press), Wellington, 2019, 132pp, $30.

This brief, very readable and at times hilarious memoir discusses the author's upbringing and his 33 years as a diplomat, focusing on seven overseas postings between 1969 and 2000. It will be of interest and value to specialists in New Zealand social history and in our foreign relations, especially the practicalities of what diplomats and their spouses actually do.

On the social history plane the outstanding theme is the impact of 1950s New Zealand on immigrant teenager Nick Bridge. He describes his father as 'an English boxwallah from Oxford', sent in the 1930s by his insurance company to Rangoon, Calcutta and Bombay, going on leave first class every few years. Never feeling settled in post-war Britain, Bridge senior took the family to New Zealand in 1956. Nick, who had been at boarding school in Hampshire, recalls the impact of the move: 'I'll never forget that first New Zealand day sailing into Wellington ... I've always remembered the palpable sense of liberation that I experienced in those early weeks in New Zealand. It has never left me and I'm still deeply grateful for it'. Starting in Brooklyn School--'a most agreeable few months'--he moved to Hutt Valley High School. 'It was a fine school and I had some very bright classmates.' Four became...