IT took 10 years of research and almost a thousand books across six academic disciplines before John Andrews was satisfied with his latest book.

No Other Home Than This: A History of European New Zealanders was launched this month in Wellington, and took a decade to complete due to the volume of research needed.

John has a “historical bent” and in 1987 published The Southern Ark, a book about the history of zoological discovery in New Zealand, as well other works on early naturalists and biological illustrators.

The inspiration for his latest came from observation of changes to the New Zealand landscape over time.

“One could see the typical Euro-style farming which evolved in the Middle East and migrated across Europe – that kind of farming which leads to a particular appearance of the country,” says John.

His interest was sharpened during a residency at the Stout Research Centre in Wellington, where he worked closely with people in the field of natural and cultural New Zealand history, and he decided to elaborate on the history of European New Zealanders.

“I wanted to know a bit more about what sort of people they were culturally, what their world view was and why they developed New Zealand in a particular way, both socially and geographically,” he says.

To write the book he had to familiarise himself with multiple subjects outside of his field of expertise.

“One of the difficulies of trying to link change in environment, cultural history, biological history, and also to try to talk about the deeper history of Europeans is that you have several different academic diciplines – and I’m only really trained in one.”

John holds a PhD in Zoology and was head of the School of Biological Sciences at Victoria University until he retired in 2001.