The Barbara Ewing Website

Barbara Ewing

Writer and Actress

One Minute Crying Time

In 1962, the young New Zealand actress Barbara Ewing, left for London, to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She went on to have a distinguished career in the theatre and in television and film, and to write celebrated novels.

This memoir covers her tumultuous childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in Wellington and Auckland in the 1950s and early 1960s. Evocative, candid and brave, this account takes us back to a long-ago New Zealand with its often difficult relations between Maori and Pakeha. And it explores, with the help of old, fading diaries, the enduring but mysterious interweavings of love, memory, and truth.

Massey University Press - Barbara Ewing One Minute Crying Time

"It is rare enough to find a first novel of real quality, rarer still that the author should be a theatre and TV actress like Barbara Ewing.
Her love story is beautifully simple, direct and true"
SUNDAY EXPRESS

"For Barbara Ewing, history is not merely a decorative background for romance, but the very centre of a passionate and enthralling intellectual adventure."
DR RICHARD PARKINSON, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum, London

"Ewing’s depictions of the theatre world, the battle between mesmerists and physicians, her portrait of the London streets, are all first-rate.... a consistently entertaining, amusing and enlightening novel - what more can one ask?"
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

"Ms Ewing.. knows how to create believable yet memorable characters, to evoke place and to tell a story which takes hold of the reader and holds them enthralled - through tears and laughter - from the first page to the last."
GAY TIMES

"Oh yes! This one’s a ripper this Victorian romantic thriller does everything books of this genre ought to do, in spades"
NZ DOMINION POST

"A delightful plum pudding of a historical novel"
SUNDAY TIMES

"Ewing, herself an actress, weaves a plot as complex as fair-isle knitting, darting teasingly between past and present, and fastens off all the threads so that the pattern is satisfyingly complete."
DAILY TELEGRAPH

BOOK OF THE WEEK: "Ideal if you want to run away with the circus."
THE SUN

"...The book reminds me of Angela Carter's "Nights at the Circus" both in its scope and its vivid exuberance....... Highly Recommended."
HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW

"...a clearer view of New Zealand society than we who live here can have.
In showing us how much we believe we have changed, she reveals to us how much we have yet to understand."
WAIKATO TIMES

BOOK OF THE WEEK "..written with insight, intelligence and style, a highly engaging and entertaining read."
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

"Ewing is an accomplished storyteller who puts the pleasure of her readers first."
THE INDEPENDENT

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