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  • History Revealed

    TV, FILM & RADIO

    Apr 16, 2020 5 minutes

    Gold crush

    The Luminaries / BBC Two, May

    Today, Hokitika in the West Coast region of New Zealand’s South Island is a quiet town with a population of around 3,000 people, but in 1866 – the year Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prizewinning novel The Luminaries (2013) is set – it was a booming but rough and ready settlement of 25,000 souls and 100 pubs, all thanks to gold having been found in the region.

    This was an era when prospectors and those hoping to profit from their discoveries flocked to a region where, previously, few Europeans had visited. Among them, in Catton’s fictionalised take on the period, was Anna Wetherell (Eve Hewson), a rebellious émigré who has sailed to New Zealand to begin a new life. In Hokitika, she supports herself

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