Guide Lines

Press, 24 August 1976, Page 24

Guide Lines

"THE SHELL GUIDE TO NEW ZEA. LAND," edited by Maurice Shadbolt. Third (revised) edition. Whit, coulls Publishers. 336 pp., with index, maps, colour and monochrome illustrations. Price, $9.95. Reviewed by A. H. STARK.

Tomorrow sees the publication of a revised and metricated edition of “The Shell Guide to New Zealand”—the third edition since it was initially published in 1968. As well as being fully metricated and up-dated, the book has many new maps and recent photographs. The guide is still a modest size and a moderate price—two attributes that make it an ideal fellow-traveller. It is equally at home in the glove compartment of a car or the bookshelf in a lounge where Shadbolt’s excellent and enlightening text can be read at leisure. The book also makes a practical and attractive gift for travellers from overseas.

Shadbolt has included information

on New Zealand’s geology and soils, climate, flora and fauna, prehistory, history and its contemporary spirit, domestic architecture and sport, before he begins a comprehensive review of the country, region by region. Each region and the four main centres are well detailed by means of a complete gazetteer. Shadbolt also suggests books for further reading — novels, short stories or poems which give “the feel" of an area, as well a? general non-fiction: a very worthy bonus. Shadbolt’s essays on Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin prove his ability of perception. He brilliantly distils the essential character of each city. Of Wellington he writes: “. . - Its unlikely setting made Wellington. It made it compact, gave it an initial centre, a unity it has never lost—for all its new sprawl wherever the hills and back country allow room. The story of this city is a struggle between man and hill; a struggle that has never slackened.”

With prose of the highest calibre, and equally superior colour photography, Maurice Shadbolt has edited, as he intended, a travel guide for all travel-, lers—armchair or active—who wish to make New Zealand an adventure of the spirit. Others, not so inclined, can always make use of the maps of highways or those that show the average travelling times.