Peter Hawes

Peter Robert Hawes (30 September 1947 – 29 October 2018) was a New Zealand playwright, novelist, and scriptwriter.

Biography Born in Westport, Hawes gained a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch.

While living in Barcelona, he wrote a novel about the Spanish Inquisition, a best seller in its Spanish translation by J. A. Bravo: La Hoguera (The Bonfire), published in 1974. After returning to New Zealand in 1975, he worked for television, as a researcher and journalist, and as a scriptwriter for various series, including Fraggle Rock, and Against the Law.

Several of his plays remain unperformed; for example, A Higher Form of Killing.

Hawes died at Koitiata on 29 October 2018.

Selected works

Novels La Hoguera (in Spanish) (The Bonfire), 1974 Tasman's Lay, 1995 Leapfrog with Unicorns, 1996 Playing Waterloo, 1998 Inca Girls Aren't Easy, 1999 The Dream of Nikau Jam, 2000 Royce, Royce, the People's Choice, 2002

Plays Alf's General Theory of Relativity, 1981 Ptolemy's Dip, 1982 Armageddon Revisited, 1983 Goldie: A Good Joke, a portrait of the early New Zealand painter C. F. Goldie, 1987 1946 The Boat Train, which examines the effect of the World War 2 on the lives of four women, 1991 Aunt Daisy!, 1989 The 1944 Olympic Games, one-act play A Higher Form of Killing, about physicist Ernest Rutherford The Inquisition Dies, developed from material in La Hoguera

Other , a history of Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North