Steven Eldred-Grigg

ELDRED-GRIGG, Steven (1952- ), is a social historian, fiction writer and autobiographer. His father came from a wealthy Canterbury sheep-farming family; his mother from a poor working-class family in south Christchurch. He was born in the Grey Valley but raised in prosperous suburban Christchurch. He attended Shirley BHS, Canterbury University (MA in history, 1975) and the Australian National University (PhD in history, 1978). Since then he has been a full-time writer based in Christchurch. Born on the back seat of a speeding taxi, the young writer grew up in suburban Christchurch. After graduating with a doctorate in history from the Australian National University the writer first became known as the author of A Southern Gentry, a book which has now sold more copies than almost any other history published in New Zealand. Quick, vivid, democratic - it leads the reader onto his other lively works of New Zealand history: A New History of Canterbury, Pleasures of the Flesh, Working People and The Rich.