Years of the Pooh-bah : a Cook Islands history

Encircling sea -- Luck of the Takitumu -- The empire holds back -- The remarkalbe Mr Moss -- Farewell the utopian dream -- Colonel Gudgeon's secret mission -- Misanthropy rules, ok -- Passengers versus the Pooh-Bah -- Gudgeon's best friend -- Mud, snow & burning sand -- Educated soldiers -- Riot aftermath -- The humiliation of Mr Hewitt -- Flowering twenties -- All canoe, no cargo -- Labour's bumpy honeymoon -- Another war, another cipa -- Winning the peace -- The cold war comes to the Cooks -- Full astern with La Reta -- The United Nations steps in -- Racing to self-rule -- Flying a circle of stars.

Richard George Scott ONZM (17 November 1923 - 1 January 2020) was a New Zealand historian and journalist. Raised on a farm at Whakarongo near Palmerston North, Scott attended Palmerston North Boys' High before completing a Diploma of Agriculture at Massey University. Working as a sharemilker, he studied socialism and joined the Communist Party. He became a journalist, and during the 1951 waterfront dispute edited the watersiders' newspaper Transport Worker and wrote illegal bulletins.

His concern for social justice led him to tell the story of Parihaka. Although, as historian Jock Phillips pointed out, "he had not met a Maori person until the age of 20 and did not know Te Reo, he recognised injustice immediately when he came across it and became convinced the story should be told."

Scott had five children, four with his first wife Elsie du Fresne (d. 1991), and lived with his second wife in the suburb of Mount Eden, in Auckland, New Zealand. One of his children was the novelist Rosie Scott.

In 2011, Scott made headlines when he auctioned a Don Binney painting that he had owned for almost 50 years, and donated the NZD $300,000 proceeds to the Christchurch earthquake appeal.

Scott died on 1 January 2020.--Wikipedia, retrieved January 2020.