Jock Phillips: Visible or Invisible Heritage?

Historian Jock Phillips will draw on his research for ‘A History of New Zealand in 100 objects’(Penguin 2022), his history of New Zealand war memorials, To the Memory (Potton Burton 2015) and a database he has developed of New Zealand memorials.

Recently there have been attacks on monuments in Britain to philanthropists whose fortunes came from the slave trade and colonial ventures. A memorial to William Wakefield, one of the founders of the New Zealand Company, in a corner of Wellington’s Basin Reserve, was recently referred to as marking a ‘sordid history’ (stuff.co.nz - The sordid history behind the Basin Reserve's Wakefield Memorial).

Yet many major historical events have no physical monuments. Decisions about whether to create memorials provide insights into what the society chooses to remember, and what they allow to be forgotten.