deep suspicion. The self-justifying rhetoric of Being Pakeha thus at times sounds like special pleading; King's contributions to social history, 'Maori' history and to biography have nonetheless been substantial. King was born in Wellington. His family was Irish and Scottish: his elders nurtured their ethnicity through Catholic ritual, and longing for their 'old countries', with their ancient pasts and their mournful songs. From an early age, King set himself a different task, encountering the New Zealand histories which lay all around him, in the archaeology and terrain of Paremata. His interest in the local was fostered by immersion in classics of New Zealand writing such as James Cowan's The New Zealand Wars , with its skirmish-by-skirmish account. He studied history at Victoria University (BA 1967) and the University of Waikato (MA 1968); and then joined the staff of the Waikato Times , where he was assigned to cover Maori issues. This brought him into close contact with the Tainui tribes and their power base at Turangawaewae marae in Ngaruawahia. King's knowledge of Maori protocol and access to a wide range of Maori informants were crucial to his writings throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. These included Moko: Maori Tattooing in the 20th Century (1972), with Marti Friedlander's elegiac photographs of surviving kuia with moko, and Maori: A Photographic and Social History (1983). King's strongest work in this 'Maori' period was in the two biographies Te Puea (1977) and Whina (1983), the lives of two charismatic Maori leaders. He draws admiring