Joe Bennett was born into the middle classes of England in 1957. Life was stable, suburban and sunny. Computers weren’t around to ruin his childhood, nor terror of paedophiles, nor fast food. He had it easy.

Aged 29, he came to New Zealand for one year to teach. Aged 51, he's still here. But in 1998 he swapped the classroom for the opinion page of the nation's newspapers. Since then he's been Qantas Media Awards Columnist of the Year three times, he's had eleven collections of his columns published in New Zealand, he's written three best-selling travel books, and he has made far too many after-dinner speeches.

In the introduction to his very first collection, he wrote: 'If anything holds these articles together it is that I like people but not in herds. I distrust all belief, most thought and anything ending in ism. Most opinion is emotion in fancy dress.'

Ten years later, this book presents the very best of a decade's work organized by topic.