Tony Eyre
Tony Eyre FCA (born Auckland 1953) is a New Zealand non-fiction writer and accountant with particular interest in the creative sector. He writes journalism and books on historical or literary subjects, focuses on creative nonfiction and essay and feature writing and is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines.[1]
Personal
[edit]Eyre, whose father's name was Peter and who had four siblings, spent his childhood in Avondale and Mount Albert in Auckland.[2] He was educated at Marist School, Mount Albert[2] and St Peter's College, Auckland,[1] where he studied, particularly, Latin French, History and English in his six years there.[3] His childhood home was filled with books often reflecting his father's interest in Auckland marine history and New Zealand art.[2] The artist Jane Eyre was a relative.[4]
Eyre and his wife Yvonne Fogarty lives in the Dunedin harbour suburb of Vauxhall. They have four adult children.[5]
Career
[edit]Eyre became an accountant and relocated to Dunedin in 1978 where he established an accounting practice[1] in premises once occupied by the publisher A H Reed.[2] He merged his practice with JW Smeaton Ltd in 2007 and retired in 2024. His accounting practice largely focussed on the Otago creative community, with many of his clients being artists, writers, and musicians.
His writing covers a broad range of New Zealand subjects with a particular interest in Dunedin social history and biography.[6] In 2023 he published "The Book Collector" which is a "bibliomemoir" of the writer's reading, the books and authors that have touched him, and how they have shaped his passion for book collecting.[6][7] He has also written many articles which have appeared in the Otago Daily Times.
Other initiatives
[edit]Eyre is a former member of the Ralph Hotere Foundation Trust which is the guardian of the legacy and intellectual property of a very significant New Zealand artist.[8] He is also the chair of the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics' Institute[1][9] He was a member of the Permanent External Advisory Committee (PEAC) of the Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic from 2004.[1] He is also a trustee of the Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e JW Smeaton (Retrieved 7 September 2023)
- ^ a b c d "The Birth of a Bookworm", Your Weekend, 23 September 2023, pp. 12 and 13.
- ^ (Eyre 2023, p. 35)
- ^ "Bookworm Tony Eyre on his passion for second-hand books". Radio New Zealand. 3 October 2023.
- ^ "Covid Lockdown by Tony Eyre", Deborah Shepherd Books (Retrieved 7 September 2023)
- ^ a b "The Book Collector, Tony Eyre", Mary Egan Books (Retrieved 7 September 2023)
- ^ Eyre, Tony (2023). The Book Collector: Reading and Living with Literature. Dunedin: Mary Egan Publishing.
- ^ White, M., "Bitter feud over Ralph Hotere's legacy," Stuff, 15 November 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
- ^ Marshall, A., "Athenaeum library not part of plans," Otago Daily Times, 7 June 2021. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
- ^ "About," Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust. Retrieved 11 June 2024.