After Me Came the Berlin Wall - Lies, Spies and Journalism

For most of his half-century in journalism Mervyn Cull worked in back offices of the New Zealand Herald, sub-editing, editing feature pages, writing editorials. But he loved challenges and, when opportunities arose for secondment to other duties requiring a senior journalist's touch, he grabbed them. He sent daily columns from Wellington, two series of articles from the Soviet Union, and numerous dispatches from Asian countries. His byline became well-known. Whether recalling his experiences with the KGB or recounting the rescue of a waterlogged hawk with a broken leg, he writes with clarity, perceptiveness and wit, and his sense of fun is always close. During his career Mervyn Cull was invited by David Lange, then Prime Minister, to become his chief press secretary. He wryly describes his brief tenure of the office as one of the less glorious episodes of my career but is grateful for it because it led indirectly to a contract in Beijing with the Chinese state news agency Xinhua and two of the happiest years of my life, despite the interruption of the Tiananmen massacre...