Out of the Shadows - The Life of Millicent Baxter

Small ownership sticker and some very light shelf wear only. Millicent Baxter was the pivot and driving force of her husband and sons' lives. In some ways they lived in her shadow. Throughout her 96 years, Millicent was surrounded by fame but untouched by it. Son James K. Baxter, was arguably the country's most celebrated poet. Husband Archie was New Zealand's most renowned WW1 conscientious objector, subjected to shocking brutality. Mother was the first woman in the British Empire to earn a degree with honours. Father was a founding professor of the University of Canterbury and Chancellor of the University of New Zealand. Millicent's surviving son Terence, also has a story to tell as a man transformed by his experiences of being imprisoned as a 'conchie' in World War 2. A forceful and sometimes daunting character with a crushing wit, lucid intellect and sharp political mind, Millicent declined an MA at the University of Cambridge and became a leading promoter of pacifism in New Zealand at a time when women just did not do such things. A strongly independent young woman, she defied her controlling father and turned her back on a life of privilege and prosperity to live with a poor rabbiter from a remote part of New Zealand's South Island.The Foreword is by Professor Kevin Clements, Director, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago. This is not only a New Zealand story. It will also interest anyone around the world who is interested in pacifism, World War 1 and 2, conscientious objection, feminism, socialism - and sheer courage and pertinacity. A good deal of the story is set in Britain and Europe; Millicent and Archie travelled there extensively and their forbears came from Scotland. Archie's abuse as a conscientious objector occurred in Salisbury in England and at the front in Belgium, and it was a British doctor who effectively saved his life.…