Ian Grant (Attended 1953-1958)
Scots College in the 1950s
Published October 2025
“The opportunities I had as student editor of The Scot yearbook and as head librarian of the library gave me the skills and confidence to engage in a life of writing, researching, and publishing,” says Ian F. Grant.
“Sport was an early priority,” he remembers. “Although I retired from boxing with two black eyes in Form 1V, I was in the top tennis team for years and my close friend Maurice Clarke and I were Wellington Secondary Schools doubles champions. I was a keen athlete and even squeaked into the rugby 1st XV in 1958.”
In the Upper Sixth (as it was called then), he attended early morning English classes at Victoria University. “I’d get dressed and train into Wellington in my civies, catch the cable car, and attend the 8:30am lecture. Then a bus trip to school and a quick change into short trousers and long socks in the Prefects’ study.”
In 1958, with the school preoccupied with headmaster Col. Glasgow’s illness and death, no-one argued when Ian took The Scot yearbook in a very different direction. “From a half A4 size into something twice as big with much more design potential and even some ‘personality’ interviews.” The two interviews published that year were with Mr Christopher McCauley, the school’s long-time janitor, and groundsman Mr Sam Short. In 1991, the school history book, The First Seven Thousand reported: “This one-year editorship has set a style that continues to the present.”
At Victoria University, in 1960, his Scots experience gave Ian the confidence to apply for the editorship of Salient, the student newspaper. This led to book and other writing assignments, radio drama writing, creative directorships in advertising agencies, and then, in 1970, to becoming an inaugural editorial and marketing director of the recently established National Business Review.
“I had already written several books when I was asked to research and write the first history of cartooning in New Zealand,” he says. “At school, my interest in political cartoons was stimulated by my favourite Scots teacher Mrs McKenzie and history text books which featured Punch cartoons.”
After publication of The Unauthorized Version: A Cartoon History of New Zealand and its display of New Zealand’s rich cartooning tradition, Ian decided it was important, given the unique perspective they give to the country’s history, to collect and preserve political or editorial cartoons nationally. The NZ Cartoon Archive was opened at the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1996. Over the following decades, a number of books were published, exhibitions organised, and over 60,000 cartoons collected.
Over a period of 50 plus years, Ian Grant has authored or co-authored 19 books, and has written chapters in many more. Most recently, he wrote a two-volume history of the New Zealand newspaper industry in association with the Alexander Turnbull Library. The New Zealand Review of Books described the first volume, Lasting Impressions, as “a compelling, often delightful read, and a truly magnificent addition to the scholarship of journalism here.”
At various times, he has been a resident at Victoria University’s Stout Research Centre for NZ Studies, and he was the Turnbull Library’s first adjunct scholar. In 2012, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the New Zealand Media Awards.
Ian and his wife Diane edited the NZ Association of Smallfarmers’ County Living magazine from 1989–95. Both were subsequently appointed life members of the Association. Ian also chaired the Wairarapa Arts Centre (now Aratoi) and, a long-time chair of the Wairarapa branch, he was elected life member of the NZ Institute of International Affairs in 2021. He and Diane received Masterton Civic Awards in 2020.
In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, Ian Grant was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature and historical preservation.
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