Simon Keable-Elliott toured New Zealand throughout October 2025 giving 15 talks to different groups on the North and South Islands.

New Zealand 2025

In October 2025 Simon Toured New Zealand and gave 15 talks to different groups. In the North Island he was based in Auckland where he spoke to U3As, Rotary Clubs and the long-established Aorangi Club; and in the South Island he spoke at 4 U3As in Christchurch.

The feedback from the talks was very kind. For example:

We all loved your background story and your delightful and ever- so- interesting and professionally delivered address. Member Aorangi Club

Your address was engaging and witty and enjoyed by all and I join in expressing my enjoyment of and admiration for your presentation. Everyone I have spoken to were similarly enthralled. Two committee members, Downtown Rotary Club 

People really enjoyed your brilliant talk. Speaker booker, Tauranga U3A

Thank you very much for your fabulous talk this morning. I thought it was great!! So interesting…  One member afterwards told me that you were the best U3A speaker that she had heard this year!! President, Christchurch Central U3A

We loved having you visit to give us your brilliant presentation – the members declared it one of the best we’ve had. Speaker Booker, Ormiston U3A

Your talk was very well received. I certainly had many people coming up to me and saying how much they enjoyed it and what an excellent speaker you are. President, Mount Albert U3A, Auckland

As in England very few audience members had heard of Simon Called Peter but one amusing exception was a woman, born in New Zealand, who remembered, when young, seeing Simon Called Peter in the bookcase at home. She confessed, aged 12, she had been caught by her mother reading a naughty passage from another book and the next day Simon Called Peter had been removed from the bookcase, never to be returned.

Below is a list of the talks given

6 Oct     Birkenhead U3A (Auckland)

6 Oct     Pakuranga U3A (Auckland)

7 Oct     The Aorangi Club (Auckland)

7 Oct     Downtown Rotary (Auckland)

10 Oct   Cambridge U3A

13 Oct    Howick U3A (Auckland)

14 Oct    Howick Rotary Club (Auckland)

16 Oct    Hobsonville U3A (Auckland)

17 Oct    Tauranga U3A

21 Oct     Mount Albert U3A (Auckland)

22 Oct     Parnell Rotary Club (Auckland)

23 Oct     Ormiston U3A (Auckland)

28 Oct     Christchurch Central U3A

29 Oct     Mountford U3A (Christchurch)

30 Oct     Kate Sheppard U3A (Christchurch)

31 Oct     Riccarton U3A (Christchurch)

Any group or organisation in New Zealand interested in booking Simon in the future or in finding out more information can email him at [email protected]

 

 

The talks 

Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel

In this talk Simon discusses Robert Keable’s time as a chaplain during the First World War and the events that led him to write his notorious novel Simon Called Peter. He looks at the critical reception to the novel, the attempts to ban it and the book’s great success. The author’s life was truly extraordinary. As a child he was an evangelical preacher. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, became a priest, worked in Zanzibar and Basutoland as a missionary and gained a reputation as a writer of devotional books. He recruited black labourers to help with the war effort and in 1917 travelled to France as chaplain to the SANLC. Witnessing the appalling racism the men faced ‘changed him’, as well as an affair with a 19 year-old lorry driver called Jolie. He left the church and after a year as a teacher back in England he fled the country to go and live in Tahiti. On the way to Tahiti he visited Australia and New Zealand where he was welcomed as an international celebrity. In Tahiti he spent a year living in Paul Gauguin's house before building his own house on the island. He continued to write and towards the end of his life he married, and had a child with, a Tahitian princess.
Simon is Robert Keable and Jolie's grandson. He has been researching Robert Keable’s life and work for the last thirty years. After taking early retirement following 25 years as a politics teacher his first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel, came out in November 2022.

1920s Tahiti: Enduring Image, Post War Craze, Writers and Artists

In this talk Simon discusses 1920s Tahiti and the English-Speaking writers and artists who moved to live on the island at that time. He also looks at the writers and artists who helped frame the enduring image of a paradise island - including James Cook, Herman Melville and Gauguin – which led to a huge Tahiti and South Pacific craze in the early 1920s. Simon visited Tahiti in 2016 where he met and interviewed the children of some of the 1920s writers who settled on the island and returned to the island in 2025.