Sir Tony Robinson is one of the world’s most recognisable history presenters.

After four career-defining series of British sitcom ‘Blackadder’, he fronted 20 seasons of the archaeological dig show ‘Time Team’.

His humorous hooks and accessible presentation has helped to demystify history and inspire passion in a whole new generation.

Robinson has written over 30 children’s books, ‘Maid Marian and Her Merry Men’, ‘The Worst Jobs in History’, and ‘Tony Robinson's Weird World of Wonders!’ just a few of the titles.

His latest work, ‘The House of Wolf’, is his first foray into fiction directed at an older audience, covering the Anglo-Saxons, Alfred the Great, and the making of England in the 9th century.

Writing for adults is quite different to writing for children, and Robinson said it scared him “rigid” when he first started.

“I had massive imposter syndrome”, he told Jack Tame.

“It's ridiculous, isn't it, like I've been on the stage for 60 odd years, and yet when it came to writing a book, terror gripped me.”

His subject matter is also a bit of a balancing act, as weaving historical fact with the narrative one wants to convey can sometimes be a challenge.

“I did go quite bonkers writing it,” Robinson told Tame.

Upon finishing the first draft, his publisher sent it off to reviewers, journalists, and some historical novelists – people Robinson respected.

“I was in even more terror,” he revealed.

“And then after six weeks, the writer Dan Jones, who wrote a stormingly popular historical novel called ‘Essex Dogs’, he wrote a review of it really, and it was so fulsome.

“Immediately, all that paranoia that I’d had dispelled completely.”

‘The House of Wolf’ is now out, and fans will be able to see him live on stage in 2026 in ‘An Audience with Sir Tony Robinson’. He’ll be performing at Auckland’s Bruce Mason Centre on February 17th, and at Christchurch’s Isaac Theatre Royal on February 18th.

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The old seems to be the newest trend.

While people are always interested in the newest thing, nostalgia is flooding the musical scene right now – Metallica, Oasis, Tool, AC/DC, and the Pixies are just a few of the acts selling out stadiums and venues at the moment.

But what’s behind the boom in nostalgia acts? How much longer can it last?

Chris Schulz joined Jack Tame to discuss the trend.

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Nash Falls by David Baldacci

Walter Nash is a sensitive, intelligent and kindhearted man. He has a wife and a daughter and a very high-level position at Sybaritic Investments, where his innate skills and dogged tenacity have carried him to the top of the pyramid in his business career. Despite never going on grand adventures, and always working too many hours, he has a happy and upscale life with his family.

However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night. They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money through Sybaritic. At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years.

Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands and try to bring Steers and her partners to justice. But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the ultimate step both to survive and to take his revenge: He must become the exact opposite of who he has always been.

And even that may not be enough.

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to reflect the many scientific discoveries in the last twenty years since this book was first published, it explains among much else:

• Why Pluto is no longer a planet
• How the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years
• How scientists used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans
• Why we still don't know what most of the universe is made of
• How the little Higgs boson transformed physics

This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers, young and old, as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now.

Written in his inimitable style, Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them.

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