Historian Paul Diamond will speak about researching photographs of Māori in an album owned by one of the officers who led the construction of the Great South Road. What became known as the ‘Urquhart Album’ sheds light on the Māori economy wiped out following the invasion of the Waikato in 1863. This talk is part of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage Public History talk series brought to you in collaboration with the Alexander Turnbull Library and hosted at National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, cnr Molesworth and Aitken Street, Wellington.

Paul Diamond (Ngāti Hauā, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is the author of A Fire in Your Belly: Māori leaders speak (2003); Makereti: Taking Māori to the world (2007); Savaged to Suit: Māori and cartooning in New Zealand (2018); and Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay (2022). He has previously worked as an oral historian and broadcaster, and was the Curator Māori at the Alexander Turnbull Library until January 2024. In 2017 he was awarded Creative New Zealand’s Berlin Writer’s Residency. Downfall was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards and the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards.