3814. The Roar of the Lion Bill Nagelkerke

The Roar of the Lion (2025) Bill Nagelkerke, Copy Press (Nelson), 126pp Pb, NZ$23, ISBN 978-0-473-75359-7 Bill Nagelkerke has a flair for capturing a tiny moment in our history and bringing it to vibrant life by re-examining it from a young person’s viewpoint. The Roar of the Lion (2025) is the second volume in a series which began with The Ghosts on the Hill (2020) and continues in Lost World in the City (2025). Each novel stands alone but some of the characters reappear. The city of Christchurch is, of course, the main character. As the garden city prepares for its first International Exhibition, from 1906 to 1907, wooden towers rise on Hagley Park and two young boys are fascinated by the chance of seeing some exotic animals. The class differences of Edwardian Canterbury are subtly sketched in. Henry Lytle lives with his father, Jack, in a humble boarding house in Cranmer Square and goes to Christchurch East School. Leo Church’s family own a large property in Papanui Road and he attends Christ’s College as well as being a cathedral chorister. Leo has a season pass to the exhibition, of course, but Henry has to find a less costly way in. Excited by rumours of lions being on display, Henry is surprised when he learns from his reporter father that it is actually a group of captured sea-lions which will be on display. Many news items were published about events at the exhibition and some fascinating extracts are included in the text, all of them, naturally, attributed to Jack. ‘A most pronounced odour of the sea pervading portions of the Acclimatisation Gardens, proclaims the temporary abiding place of the oddities of fur and feather brought up by Captain Bollons.’ Young readers will be amused by the pompous style but Henry is a sterner critic. ‘You managed to fit in a lot of ‘ps’ in the first sentence,’ he warns his father. Jack is more interested in writing novels than journalism but will he succeed? Jack’s friendship with William, the Acclimatisation Society’s animal keeper, means that Henry gets a part-time position as assistant caretaker of the wildlife enclosure at Victoria Lake. (William, whose sister Elsie appears in The Ghosts on the Hill, is also able to give Henry a Southern Māori view of the famous pā created for the exhibition.) Henry hopes for a career as a zoo-keeper but he finds life caring for the fish-eating captives is not easy. The names which some of the sea-lions are given - Bumper, Bully and Sneak – hint at their behaviour. Henry’s most alarming moment comes when the largest of them, Jumbo, manages to break out of the enclosure. Can Leo and Henry find a way to get him back? Equally daunting are Henry’s visits to his grandmother, who is constantly railing against the decline in modern manners. Bill Nagelkerke has a lovely writing style with a nice touch of humour. Henry finds his chair at Grandma’s New Brighton home very uncomfortable: ‘It was hard and unyielding, much like Grandma herself.’ Henry later takes delight in naming one of his sealion charges Nelly, after her. Jack is horrified, ‘Grandmother must never, ever find out.’ There are also many interesting minor characters including Mr Strong the librarian who dreams of a children’s section, Mr Purfleet the actor who names Leo’s dog Macbeth (because he murders sleep) and Professor Bickerton who is the moving spirit behind the sequel to this volume, Lost World in the City. The Roar of the Lion is an enjoyable historical novel. The author’s Historical Note provides young readers with plenty of ways they can find out more about their own local history. It may even inspire them to write their own stories of the past. Trevor Agnew Jan 2026