New Zealander of the Year for 2003 was author and historian Michael King, whose personal and professional qualities stood above his peers.
The accolade necessarily focused on his life and work in 2003.
Yet, as often happens, the particular year crowned decades of profound achievement and outstanding character.
Neither pointy-head nor populist, King wrote the Penguin History of New Zealand, which is so good it inspired one Herald reader to suggest it ought to be bought for every school pupil in the land.
It is a work as humane, unpretentious and enlightened as its creator, thoroughly contemporary but deep in outlook. It is a work of scholarship accessible to the "ordinary"reader.
