when through his work for the WEA he discovered parts of New Zealand he had not known before and in his classes and the summer schools met a remarkable range of New Zealanders. In its way, debating J.S. Bach with Norman Richmond and John Shearer was a step towards discovering the New Zealand mind, as was finding the paintings of John Weeks and, a little later, T.A. McCormack . The Short History proved to be something more than a study of the extension of capitalist civilisation. In the later 1930s John began reading in the history of colonial America, especially Virginia and the New England colonies, which, as we have seen, became one of his great interests and a field in which he did some of his best teaching during and after the war. He recognised that to view such colonies simply as the products of England's commercial capitalism of the seventeenth century gave little real understanding of what they were and what they were to become. Did this not suggest that there might be more to New Zealand history than he had earlier allowed? His teaching, especially the supervision of theses, and working in the Centennial Branch greatly increased his knowledge of New Zealand and New Zealand history; greater knowledge led to greater interest. age 285 a family, a permanent job and a home played their part. Davidson, who as one of his students and as a colleague in the Centennial Branch came to know John well in these