Mike Munro spent nearly 22 years working inside the political domain in Wellington, reporting from the parliamentary press gallery before becoming chief press secretary to one Labour prime minister and chief of staff to another. This memoir provides insights into events and personalities that dominated his time as a political poacher and then gamekeeper, from the fall of Muldoon to the flowering of the Ardern government.

It’s a story that traverses an unfading time in New Zealand politics, covering the tumultuous period of change from the 1980s through to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.