William & Tiraha

Paihia, 1823, and William Cook is injured, abandoned by his whaling ship. He is nursed at the Mission by Tiraha, whāngai daughter of the great chief Nene.

Fifty years later, this couple’s grandson meets his grandparents for the first time and hears the story of their long life together.

Abraham senses long-buried secrets as his grandfather tells how, abandoned once again, this time with a young family in the isolated deep south, he and Tiraha drew on the knowledge and skills of both their cultures to survive,
and to escape.

Pioneer shipbuilders on remote Stewart Island, and making ingenious use of scarce resources, William and Tiraha eventually cross the Tasman with their growing family to deliver a new-built vessel for the Weller brothers. They return, finally, to the Bay of Islands to witness the coming of British law, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Flagstaff Wars. Despite the tensions from their own divided loyalties in these turbulent times, William and Tiraha grow to understand each other and the new country they are helping to shape.

A first-person story inside a nineteenth-century memoir, constructed as a novel – Michael Littlewood has taken historical evidence and family lore and produced a compelling work of biographical fiction for adventure-seekers, seafarers and anyone intrigued by the earliest days of Pākehā–Māori relations.

Author Biography

Among Michael Littlewood’s family “secrets” was his Māori great-great-great-grandmother, Tiraha, the whāngai daughter of Ngāpuhi’s Tamati Waka Nene. 

William & Tiraha is Michael’s first foray into a fictional voice, after a lifetime of academic and professional writing. It comes with a foundation of thorough and meticulous research over several years, consulting with his wider family and travelling to many of the sites described.

After a relatively brief career in law, Michael became an employee benefits consultant in London and New Zealand. In 2006 he helped establish the Retirement Policy and Research Centre at the University of Auckland. He was its co-director for nine years.

Michael has written extensively on public policy issues associated with savings and pensions and is the author of How to Create a Competitive Market in Pensions – The international lessons (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1998).  He is the principal editor of www.PensionReforms.com