Lee is best remembered for all the wrong reasons - his perceived criticism of Prime Minister Savage as the hero of the masses lay near death, writing Children of the Poor, which his critics claimed insulted his own family and being tossed out of the Labour Party.
A brilliant mind regardless of his supposed transgressions Lee was also a brave soldier who lost an arm in World War I, and a prolific writer of books.
In Rhetoric at the Red Dawn, he reveals that Wairarapa, particularly Masterton, was one of his stop-offs and that soapbox oratory in the little towns and hamlets was not at all an unusual happening.
More surprising to me though was to find former Prime Minister Jack Marshall had much stronger links to Wairarapa.
His forebears came out from Britain, farmed at Kopuaranga and along the Waingawa River and Jack Marshall returned here from time to time, before and during his political career, to soak up the historical links his family had to Wairarapa.
He presumably would also have visited Masterton cemetery where his maternal grandparents, along with aunts, are buried.
Other visitors who came here, saw what they liked and lingered included Sir Francis Chichester, whose claim to fame was being the first person to sail singled-handed round the world, and my favourite poet Rupert Brooke, whose war sonnets were magnificently scribed and whose life was tragically cut short when he contracted sepsis from an infected mosquito bite and died in 1915.
In more recent times, and with the rest of New Zealand awakening to what Wairarapa has to offer, we have had an influx of celebrities of all shapes and sizes.
Some, such as film producers Peter Jackson and James Cameron, have set up home here, so has their contemporary Vincent Ward but he is entitled to a wry smile when I say that.
Vince is a son of Wairarapa in the truest sense, he was born and raised in Greytown.
