A unique interview with John Lennon which was recorded when The Beatles were in New Zealand in 1964. It was recorded by Psychology Professor Dr Tony Taylor who was at the time doing a study into Beatlemania. It gives a remarkable insight into Lennon's thoughts regarding fame, music and life generally at a time when the group was still new to all the world-wide adulation they were receiving. I have included an attachment of both the covers and the text for you to enjoy and to quote from if you think it will help the posting for your blog. I think this is something of a coup for a New Zealand...

Wednesday's Women This study explores the reasons why so few women writers in Aotearoa New Zealand were seen as prominent figures in the literary scene from the end of World War Two up to the time when the feminist movement gained momentum, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Using feminist methodology, I examine whether women writers were deliberately under-represented and their work trivialised by the male writers, critics and publishers of the time. What were the factors accounting for this under-representation? I also discuss to what extent there were successes and achievements, either...

Neither Here Nor There is an intriguing story about two bohemian down and outs who are caught in an existential dilemma: They don't know which city they live in, Auckland or Dunedin. This Beckettian tale takes the reader on a dream/reality tour of the vortex into which two minds have been swept. With humour and compassion Michael O'Leary explores the inner workings of the crisis of modern people who find they have no place in the society they were born into. The book also include O'Leary's iconic poem 'Rubesahl' plus the introduction to his auto-biography, 'Die Bibel'.

The Irish Annals of New Zealand is essentially a Joycean tour-de-force through New Zealand's history from the Irish rather than the usual English point of view. However, as well as historical facts the novel incorporates many other linguistic and language conceits and concepts. The story begins with the main character falling from a train, having opened the wrong door because he is drunk. He lies dying alone in the falling snow of the central North Island. During the course of the novel he is visited by several of his ancestors, Irish and Maori, who tell him about his life. He also turns into...

Magic Alec's Revenge is the third novel in Michael O'Leary's trilogy Dreamlander Express. It concerns the main character, Magic Alex, who was part of The Beatles' entourage in the late 1960s. Exposed as a charlatan rather than the electronic 'wizard' he claimed to be, he is now, 50 years later, in a lunatic hospital, claiming that he invented all the things that control our everyday lives, the internet, cell phones, i-phones etc, and his revenge is our imprisonment by dependence on all his inventions. The novel also contrasts the All You Need Is Hate world of the 1930s Nazis to the All You...

Straight is the first in Michael O'Leary's trilogy, Dreamlander Express. It is the story of Paul Calvert who returns to his hometown, Auckland, after being away in 'dreamland' for several years. He discovers that all the things he knew about the family he grew up in are false. Questions arise: was his real father a high-ranking SS officer and was his conception and birth a Nazi racial experiment to test whether the Maori people of New Zealand are the Ayrian Maoris as suggested by 19th Century eugenic philosophers.

Michael O'Leary's Dreamlander Express trilogy. It tells the story of factory worker Patrick Mika Fitzgerald, who after several years of working at the same job and looking after his ailing mother, is freed from these ties by death and redundancy. He embarks on an existential train journey in pursuit of a woman he has dreamed of meeting. When reality and dreams colide his world is turned into a previously unknown state of moral real dilema.

This collection of poems by New Zealand poet Michael O'Leary takes the reader through the several suburbs and areas that make up the poet's hometown. O'Leary looks at Central. North, South, East and West Auckland with affection and an eye for the unusual. There is also a long sequence called Auckland Revisited, and all these works are currently being made into songs to be released on a CD later in 2015.

Michael O'Leary's Selected Poems takes the reader through many and varied encounters with the world, both inner and outer. He writes of love and war, good and evil and several other states of mind and being that are always being altered by the ideas and people he encounters as he travels through life. There is a great variety of styles of poetry in this book, including two long and winding poems, one about Wellington City, the other about Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. Such are the wide and varied themes in O'Leary's explorations of the human psyche.