Inside Philip Polkinghorne’s Murder Trial - With Steve Braunias

Steve Braunias is one of New Zealand’s best known and most loved writers.

He has spent decades journalling New Zealand life with a writing style and turn of phrase that is unlike anyone else.

On top of regular columns for newspapers and magazines he has written 14 books.

In his latest book, Polkinghorne: The Trial of the Century, he turns his attention to one of the country’s most fascinating and disturbing court trials.

Steve sat through every minute of every day of the nine-week High court trial, taking in everything that was going on.

In this episode, Steve shares his thoughts on Philip Polkinghorne after spending over two months watching him, hearing every detail of his life and even having various one on one conversations with him in and around court.

We talk about the personal toll of writing about human tragedy, his process, his regrets, and the moral dilemmas that come with telling these sorts of stories.

The next episode of the Dom Harvey Podcast will be more of a standard podcast episode where we get to deconstruct the intriguing life and career of Steve Braunias. But this one here is the section of our podcast that focussed exclusively on Polkinghorne- the book, the trial and the man himself.

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