Alastair Carthew

Alastair’s credentials for writing a satirical novel and then a parody about his South Pacific home country, New Zealand, are based on more than four decades of working in the media industry.
He worked as a newspaper and broadcasting journalist, public relations executive, presenter, lecturer, moderator, writer, editor, researcher and senior manager in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, South Africa, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand.
Alastair’s 12 years in and around the Wellington political scene as a political reporter, chief parliamentary reporter and current affairs editor and producer covering politics from the mid-70s to the late 1980s give him an idiosyncratic insight into the back door machinations of politics.
Born in a small rural town and spending his teenage school years working on his uncle’s farm before working in large cities also enabled Alastair to shrewdly observe—and mildly spoof--the rural/urban divide that is an integral part of “Proud’s” narrative.
Alastair’s experience of living overseas for more than a decade has also given him a sharp eye for the bizarre, the quirky, the abnormal of New Zealand society, which he has parodied through an acute sense of humour coupled with the eye of a seasoned observer.