Christchurch Bookshops Praised

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 11

Christchurch Bookshops Praised

“Christchurch has some of the finest bookshops one could see anywhere,” said Mr R. J. Unstead, a noted English writer of history books for young people. “This is not flattery, the abundance and diversity of the books in one city shop I visited was better than any one would find in a city of the same size in England.”

He said he could well understand the reputation New Zealand had gained of being one of the best book-buying countries in the world. Mr Unstead is visiting Christchurch as part of a “sabbatical year” he has taken as a break from writing. He is visiting Commonwealth countries, giving talks, visiting schools and universities. Whole areas in England had no bookshops, because bookbuying had been divorced from education in England, Mr Unstead said. There were only two or three good bookshops in England. Unlike

New Zealand, children did not grow up with the idea df buying books. Mr Unstead has been writing history books for 16 years and his books are used as textbooks in most Commonwealth countries. His most popular book, "Looking at History," has sold three million copies. ■ ■■ Before he turned to writing full time he was a schoolmaster in Hertfordshire and at the time he gave up teaching in 1950 he was a headmaster of a school of 500 pupils.

He has been able to live on the royalties from his books since then. There were only three or four authors in England who were able to do this, he said, and he attributed his success to the field of education he had chosen to write in.

As a small boy and later as a teacher he was repelled by the history books he read. The style was adult; they were written in small print,

with the minimum of illustrations and did not tell him anything that be wanted to know. “I wanted to know the everyday things the people did. The time they got up, where they worked, what they did for recreation. “The first publisher I approached with this idea of writing history for young people said it would never be successful—and the first book sold a million copies in three years.” Mr Unstead will leave for Auckland on Sunday, and travel back to England through Australia and Singapore.