Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle, is the subject of two new biographies. He’s famous for his association with Darwin, but as Governor of New Zealand from 1843 to 1846, he seems to have been one of life’s heroic failures.

The two books are given a thorough going-over by Steve Braunias in the latest Listener. The first book is FitzRoy: The remarkable story of Darwin's captain and the invention of the weather forecast by John and Mary Gribbin. It’s relatively sympathetic to Fitzroy: "ploddingly told, but assiduously researched".

The alternative is Evolution's Captain: The dark fate of the man who sailed Charles Darwin around the world by Peter Nichols. Nichols' book is more critical of its subject:

… good enough to acknowledge that FitzRoy was the first person to publish ye olde sayings about the weather in his Barometer Manual … But that's about the extent of his charity.

If the New Zealand angle is critical to you, however, go for the Gribbins’ book.

Nichols, in Evolution's Captain, only devotes five pages to FitzRoy in New Zealand. As always, he is readable and damning: "He made a hash of it." The Gribbins biography has a chapter on those years – titled, absurdly, "Difficulties Down Under" – and, as always, regard their subject with a sympathetic eye.

Tim Hanna’s John Britten is also reviewed in the Listener this week. This book has spent around 20 weeks in the New Zealand Non-Fiction for Adults chart, going as high as #2, and currently sits at #6.

The book had a difficult gestation, recounted by reviewer Bruce Aynsley. Aynsley was apparently offered the opportunity to write it before Hanna took the job on:

Hanna wrote the book, and he's made a good job of it. His biography is probably Britten's best epitaph; the legend is a good deal larger than the legacy.