"When I left the CIA, if you were going to ask me, 'Would you write about espionage?' I'd say, 'Absolutely not.' So why are former CIA officers turning up in Hollywood?

62: William Clachan was made of tough stuff. The Wellington schoolteacher was wounded three times on the Western Front.

Philanthropist and economist Gareth Morgan has set out two challenges to the Government at his first visit to Ratana Pa.

Two companies responsible for digging up an archaeologically significant early Maori site have today been convicted and discharged by a judge.

61: Today we might call them special forces. When Robert Kenneth Nicol joined a top secret British Army unit in 1918, it was known as the "hush-hush brigade".

Pakeha nearly "exterminated" Maori and need to make good on the intent of the Treaty - including compulsory te reo in all primary schools, Gareth Morgan says.

A lost documentary Alfred Hitchcock made about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during World War Two has finally reached screens thanks to movie mogul Brett Ratner.

Survivors who escaped the gas chambers at Auschwitz have remembered the horror of the infamous Nazi death camp 70 years after liberation by Red Army soldiers.

With now more than 10,000 descendants, the first Hansens' place in history was acknowledged at a major reunion of about 1200 family and friends in Manukau on Friday and Saturday.

Eerie photographs taken during Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole over a century ago have surfaced at an Auckland auction.

Seventy years ago today, a German submarine went on an unsuccessful search for ships to sink in New Zealand waters.

The surprise departure of NZ spy agency boss Ian Fletcher has prompted questions about whether he was unsettled by potential changes which could be in the pipeline.

Most of us are still suckers for an old wives' tale, presuming that homely wisdom passed down through the ages must contain at least a grain of truth.

Veteran supermaxi Wild Oats XI has reinforced her standing as the most successful boat in the 70-year history of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, claiming line honours for a record eighth time.

It is a quarter of a century since Straight Outta Compton, the seminal gangsta rap album, made a 25 sq km area of Los Angeles synonymous with gang violence and murder.

The Boxing Day feats of Brendon McCullum have underlined his favouritism to win this year’s supreme Halberg Award. Andrew Alderson selects another six of the finest performances by New Zealand test cricketers in a calendar.

Grisly exhibits linked to some of Britain’s most notorious criminals are set to go on display for the first time – after years hidden away.

Every American knows about the Mayflower making landfall in 1620 in what is now called Provincetown, Massachusetts...

More than 500 people gathered on a hilltop in the Bay of Islands yesterday to celebrate the bicentenary of Pakeha settlement in New Zealand.

On Wednesday it rained and on the few occasions it stopped, it thundered. It was a hell of a day to go to poor old Motat and hardly anyone did.

There is a growing belief that we're going to end up with a national flag that reflects our prowess on the rugby field rather than continuing with the existing emblem.

A 93-year-old German man Oskar Groening, who claims he was an accountant at Auschwitz, to go on trial for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 prisoners.

55: For five anxious years the troopships set sail from New Zealand, carrying her men in uniform away to war.

Four surviving veterans of one of New Zealand's most famous naval battles joined nearly 600 sailors and thousands of well-wishers in a parade on Auckland's Queen St yesterday to mark the Battle of the River Plate's 75th anniversary.

"I wasn't as dead as I had first surmised." Those were the words of HMS Achilles gunnery officer, Lieutenant Richard Washbourn, in a previously unpublished letter.

Many years ago, when I was a young man, I visited London for the first time.

A tunnel will remove a road that had cut off part of the heritage site, and restore some tranquility to the mystic setting.

New research suggests Viking conquests were more like romantic getaways than drunken stag dos - but they still had a penchant for brutality.

With bells clanging, whistles screeching and hundreds of booted sailors clattering to their firing stations, boy seaman Bob Batt had every right to be scared.

Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of one of New Zealand's worst riots. On December 7, 1984 Auckland's Queen St was the scene of a bloody struggle between 100 youths and police.