James McNeish was born in 1931 and is a novelist, biographer and playwright, with an international reputation since 1965.

His writing is gleamed from a very interesting life: he has recorded folk music in twenty-one countries, worked with Joan Littlewood in the East End of London, lived with Danilo Dolci, a courageous non-violent opponent of the Mafia, wrote a book about the David Bain murders and has written and produced many dialogue-documentaries for the BBC and CBC.

He’s also lived on an island for 15 years.

James has five stage plays to his name, all which combine humour with social issues and provoke questions about small communities that are not always easily answered.

He wrote The Rocking Cave, about the early settlement days of Waipu, for the Mercury Theatre's 1973 Festival production in Auckland (directed by Ian Mune and commissioned by Tony Richardson - the first professional producer in New Zealand at the time), where it was an immediate success.

It has since had a revival in the town and James says of this production; “It seemed to take over the whole community, with 400-500 involved. The Director Lachie Maclean saw the production as a teenager and went away burning to do it. In 1990 he tried, but a public meeting in Waipu had it banned. It shows the strength of theatre.”

In 1975 The Mouse Men premiered at The Mercury Theatre and the company then toured his play 1895. Circa Theatre commissioned Thursday Bloody Thursday in 1994 and it received a workshop. It is yet unproduced, as is Tomorrow Hasn’t Come.
 
James McNeish began writing plays in the 1950s and although he hasn’t written one for awhile, he hasn’t stopped thinking about theatre. “One is always thinking about writing plays. My books have taken up the past 10 years. I need to go away somewhere quiet and do some thinking. I’ll either write a fairytale or shoot myself.”