Dick Scott (historian)

Scott's first book, 151 Days (1952), was an account of the 1951 New Zealand waterfront dispute. It has been described as capturing "the dark days of that winter of discontent with an energy and immediacy, lost by subsequent more dispassionate accounts." His most well-known work is Ask That Mountain (1975), which recounts the events of the non-violent Māori resistance to European occupation at Parihaka. " The story had largely been forgotten by non-Māori New Zealanders until the book's publication. It has been reprinted nine times, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark called it "one of New Zealand's most influential books". ==Honours and awards==

Scott was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to historical research, in the 2002 Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours, and in 2007 he received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (Non-Fiction). In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Massey University's College of Humanities and Social Sciences in recognition of the influence of his historical research and writing. ==Personal life==

Raised on a farm at Whakarongo near Palmerston North, Scott attended Palmerston North Boys' High before completing a Diploma of Agriculture at Massey University. Working as a sharemilker, he studied socialism and joined the Communist Party. He became a journalist, and during the 1951 waterfront dispute edited the watersiders' newspaper Transport Worker and wrote illegal bulletins. In 2011, Scott made headlines when he auctioned a Don Binney painting that he had owned for almost 50 years, and donated the NZD $300,000 proceeds to the Christchurch earthquake appeal. Scott died on 1 January 2020, at the age of 96. ==Selected works==

• 151 Days (1952) Penguin. • The Parihaka Story (1954) Southern Cross Books. • In Old Mount Albert: Being a History of the District (1961) Southern Cross Books. • Inheritors of a Dream: A Pictorial History of New Zealand (1962) Longman Paul. • Winemakers of New Zealand (1964) Southern Cross Books. • Stock in Trade: Hellaby’s First Hundred Years (1973) Southern Cross Books. • Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka (1975) Heinemann. • Stake in the Country: Assid Abraham Corban (1977) Reed Books. • Fire on the Clay: The Pakeha Comes to West Auckland (1979) Southern Cross Books. • Seven Lives on Salt River (1979) Penguin. • Years of the Pooh-Bah: A Cook Islands History (1991) Cook Islands Trading Corporation. • Would a Good Man Die? Niue Island, New Zealand, and the late Mr Larsen (1993) Hodder & Stoughton. • Pioneers of New Zealand wine (2002) Reed Books/Southern Cross Books. • ''Dick Scott: A Radical Writer's Life'' (2004) Reed Books. ==References==