New Moons for Sam is a rare insider’s account of how New Zealand conducts its diplomacy, forges alliances and makes the most of its position as a small South Pacific country on a global stage written by a former New Zealand diplomat. It is a personal story, told with refreshing honesty, of a new migrant who carves out his own path to becoming a Kiwi. It also provides a fascinating and at times humorous insight into his time as a young VSA volunteer in Tonga and on diplomatic postings in Fiji, Canada, Geneva, Samoa, Germany and Singapore. It ends with the author’s advocacy - garnered from a lifetime’s work in foreign affairs roles - that it is time for New Zealand to become a republic.

In 1961, a boy from Somerset embarked with his family on a six-week voyage to New Zealand. He left behind an English village where generations of his family had lived to make a new home in a remote country that was still closely tied to the one he’d left. Despite challenges adapting as new immigrants, these were good times to be growing up in rural New Zealand. But the country was about to embark on its own change as ties with Britain were loosening, and a more outward-looking, confident and diverse nation was emerging. Peter Hamilton joined the diplomatic service as this change was getting underway. His four-decade career saw him leading diplomatic and free trade efforts with traditional and new partners at a time of unprecedented international change for his adopted country.

This intimately-written memoir offers much about what history teaches us about ourselves and the societies we live in. Its life-learning themes traverse countries and time periods. And it ends with a call for a major constitutional change.