The prison diary of A.C. Barrington : dissent and conformity in wartime New Zealand / John Pratt ; with an introduction by John Barrington.
Material type: TextPublisher: Dunedin, New Zealand : Otago University Press, 2016Copyright date: ©2016Description: 199 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, facsimiles ; 23 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781927322314
- 1927322316
- Prison diary of AC Barrington
- Barrington, A. C. (Archibald Charles), 1906-1986 -- Diaries
- Wellington Prison -- New Zealand -- History
- Pacifists -- New Zealand -- Diaries
- Political prisoners -- New Zealand -- Diaries
- World War, 1939-1945 -- New Zealand
- Political persecution -- New Zealand -- History -- 20th century
- New Zealand -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
- 940.53162092 23
- JX1962.A2 P73 2016
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | City Campus City Campus Main Collection | 940.53162092 BAR (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | A539382B |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dissent, Imprisonment and the Barrington Diary -- 2. Mount Crawford Prison, 1941 -- 3. Life in Mount Crawford Prison -- 4. Prison Staff and Officials -- 5. The Inmates -- 6. Prison Past and Present -- 7. Dissent, Intolerance and the Dark Side of Paradise.
"A.C. (Archie) Barrington was a leading New Zealand pacifist during World War 2. Incarcerated in Mount Crawford Prison for his beliefs in 1941, he kept an illicit diary, scrawled in the margins of books. Many years later his son John happened across the diary and painstakingly reconstructed it. Such documents are exceptionally rare - until recent times prisoners were not allowed to keep any record of their experiences and many were illiterate anyway. Barrington vividly and compellingly recorded the squalid, rundown conditions, monotonous and exhausting labour, the intense cold from which there was little protection, and the strategies he and his fellow pacifists adopted to enable them to cope with prison life. John Pratt has edited the diary and provides a fascinating commentary on the issues it raises in relation to prison life then and now. He also addresses a fundamental question - what were Barrington and his like doing in prison, when similar expressions of dissent would almost certainly have been ignored in Australia or Britain? Why was New Zealand, with its 'fair go', egalitarian reputation, so intolerant and punitive? Pratt chronicles a history of intolerance, suspicion and deep-seated antipathies that may go some way towards explaining the current penal saturation in this 'friendly' land."--Cover.
There are no comments on this title.