Writers' centre proposed to honour King

A plan for a writers' centre to remember Michael King was proposed at a memorial service for the historian in Wellington yesterday.

More than 1000 people crowded into the Museum of New Zealand to hear tributes to King, 58, who died with his wife Maria Jungowska, 54, in a car crash near Maramarua, south of Auckland, on March 30.

Auckland writer Gordon McLauchlan ended his speech by asking for help to set up the centre. He said a property next to short-story writer and novelist Frank Sargeson's cottage in Takapuna, Auckland, was on the market .

The section once belonged to Sargeson, who died in 1982, and on it stood the army hut in which Janet Frame wrote Owls Do Cry.

King was deputy chairman of the Sargeson Trust and a supporter of initiatives to help writers work on their craft, McLauchlan said.

"So we've got the chance of getting [the section] back, and I urge anyone ... [able] to do so to help us set up the Michael King Writing Centre."

Fog at Auckland Airport prevented Prime Minister Helen Clark attending.

Her speech was read by MP Marian Hobbs. "By the time of his death, with more than 30 books to his credit, he had made an immense contribution to New Zealand's history and scholarship," Helen Clark wrote.

- NZPA