Awards

• Runner-up for Bert Roth Award for Labour History 2021
• Winner of New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards - non-fiction category 2021
• Winner of New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards — non-fiction category 2021
• Winner of New Zealand Society of Authors age Book Awards 2020

Overview

INSIDE THE FORBIDDING STONE WALLS OF NEW ZEALANDS MOST INFAMOUS GAOL. Mount Eden is this countrys most famous gaol. The forbidding Victorian structure has housed some of the countrys most notorious criminals, and is where many hangings took place, right up until modern times. It has been both the site of tension and conflict and a driver of prison reform. It has housed political prisoners such as Rua Kenana and Tim Shadbolt and high-profile criminals such as George Wilder, and many times it has been almost destroyed in big riots. In Rock College, highly regarded historian Mark Derby tells the fascinating and sometimes shocking story of the prison, its inmates and its superintendents with verve and compassion.

Full Product Details

9780995131859

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Reviews

‘If you want to know what it’s like inside that place, this book is the next best thing to a ten-year stretch’ -- James ‘Diamond Jim’ Shepherd, former inmate of Mount Eden Prison ‘A major contribution to New Zealand’s penal history’ -- Sir Kim Workman, penal reform advocate ‘This is truly a detailed history of an unsavoury subject, the scope of which is quite remarkable.’ * Otago Daily Times * ‘Derby’s tendency to keep the narrative local and lead with the stories of people and events helps make the book an incredibly engaging read. Derby does a great job developing the kind of thick description of penal practice and life inside that is nearly impossible to find in existing published work. I consider Rock College a must-read’  -- Liam Martin * New Zealand Journal of History *

'If you want to know what it's like inside that place, this book is the next best thing to a ten-year stretch' - James 'Diamond Jim' Shepherd, former inmate of Mount Eden Prison; 'A major contribution to New Zealand's penal history' - Sir Kim Workman, penal reform advocate; 'This is truly a detailed history of an unsavoury subject, the scope of which is quite remarkable.' - Otago Daily Times; 'Derby's tendency to keep the narrative local and lead with the stories of people and events helps make the book an incredibly engaging read. Derby does a great job developing the kind of thick description of penal practice and life inside that is nearly impossible to find in existing published work. I consider Rock College a must-read' - Liam Martin, New Zealand Journal of History

Author Information

Mark Derby is a New Zealand writer and historian whose work has also been published in Britain, Spain and the US. His previous publications include Ragnar Redbeard: The Antipodean Origins of Radical Fabulist Arthur Desmond (Steele Roberts, 2017), Petals and Bullets: Dorothy Morris: New Zealand Nurse in the Spanish Civil War (Sussex Academic Press/Potton & Burton, 2015), White-collar Radical: Dan Long and the Rise of the White-collar Unions (Craig Potton Publishing, 2013), The Prophet and the Policeman: The Story of Rua Kenana and John Cullen (Craig Potton Publishing, 2009), Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War (Canterbury University Press, 2009; Spanish-language edition published 2011 in association with the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain). He has been jailed but never imprisoned, and lives on Wellington’s south coast with three generations of his family.

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