Singing Historian: A Memoir

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Historian, biographer, novelist, broadcaster, lecturer and international singer Edmund Bohan is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Edward Stafford, James Edward FitzGerald and Sir George Grey, the general histories of New Zealand: The Story So Far and Climates of War: Conflicts in New Zealand 1859-1869, and the O'Rorke series of historical novels. The Stafford and Grey biographies were Montana Book Award finalists. During his long singing career - much of it based in Britain - he sang more than 170 different major choral, operatic and orchestral works, and broadcast regularly. This light-hearted memoir, richly anecdotal and enlivened with pen-portraits of memorable personalities - musical, literary and academic - chronicles with wit and a sharply observant eye a lifetime of achievement as singer and writer. Following childhood in wartime Invercargill inside a close-knit family, he enjoyed schooldays at Christchurch Boys' High School and defining years at Canterbury University. After teaching for a period he left for Sydney and then London, establishing a career as a versatile 'general practitioner' of singing, mainly in concerts but enjoying memorable times with Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group and Kent Opera. A tour home with the NZSO prompted a permanent return as the end of 1987, where he resumed his 19th-century studies. He has concentrated on writing since then, though he continued to play character roles for Canterbury Opera, Wellington City Opera and the State Opera of South Australia for another dozen years. A dedicated family man, he now tends his Opawa garden - and plans new projects.