Philip Temple is one of the top rank of New Zealand writers, and author of over thirty books in a variety of genres. Born in Yorkshire and educated in London, after moving to New Zealand his early work focused on explorers and mountaineers, including The World at Their Feet (1969), which won the Wattie Book Award, and Castles in the Air (1973). His first novels, The Explorer (1975) and Stations (1979), were strong realist chronicles of early settlement; and his two-part anthropomorphic sagas of the mountain kea, Beak of the Moon (1981) and Dark of the Moon (1993) are unique in New Zealand literature.

During the last 20 years, he has spent much time in Berlin and he has written three novels which examine the ghosts and guilt of modern German history, including I Am Always with You (2006). Philip has also written the creative non-fiction work New Zealand Explorers: Great Journeys of Discovery (1985), which was a Wattie finalist and later adapted for television. His award-winning children’s picture books are based on his knowledge of New Zealand terrain and natural history, and include The Legend of the Kea (1986) and Kakapo, Parrot of the Night (1988). Further books of his include several walking track guides, and he is also a published outdoor photographer.

Philip has written for newspapers and journals in New Zealand and abroad, on a range of subjects from mountaineering to electoral reform. He has received many awards, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1979) and the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers Residency (2003-2004). Recent writing highlights include The Last True Explorer (2002), which describes his experiences as a young man climbing the highest mountain in the Pacific and exploring western New Guinea, and his social history A Sort of Conscience: the Wakefields (2002), which won the prestigious Ernest Scott History Prize. In the 2004 New Year Honours List he was awarded an ONZM (New Zealand equivalent of OBE) for services to literature, and he received a Prime Ministers Awards for Literary Achievement in 2005.