More Sad Blows than Usually Fall The Taylers of El (by Brian Beer)

•  First Edition 2023, 278 pages
• Publisher: Brian Beer
• Format: Soft cover, fold in flaps, Format C
• Condition: New

This is the story of one family but it is also the story of how a small town in Taranaki emerged from the Victorian era and entered the modern age.

George Washington Tayler can rightly be called the ‘Father of Eltham’. He and his wife Alice raised six children in the town, which they helped to shape from the earliest days of European settlement.

The product of years of careful research, this book explores the everyday lives of one extraordinary family: soldiers and politicians, nurses and storekeepers, farmers and rugby players. As the world around them was turned upside down, they demonstrated true heroism in the face of the horrors of the First World War and the Spanish Flu, whilst devoting their lives to public service and creating opportunities for subsequent generations.

The story of the Taylers of Eltham is a compelling and moving account of one family’s triumphs and tragedies through seven turbulent decades. This is an affectionate chronicle of a vanished world, one that goes to the heart of the New Zealand colonial experience.