Chris in China, 1937 r.

Chris in China, 1937 r. - James M.Bertram

James Munro Bertram (11 August 1910 – 24 August 1993) was a New Zealand Rhodes scholar, a journalist, writer, relief worker, prisoner of war and a university professor. Bertram was born in Auckland on 11 August 1910, son of Ivo Edgar Bertram, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Evelyn Susan Bruce. His great-grandparents on both sides had arrived in Wellington in the 1840s. He spent ten years of his childhood in Melbourne and Sydney, and attended church schools. He returned to New Zealand for secondary schooling at Waitaki Boys' High School, where he befriended Charles Brasch and Ian Milner (the son of headmaster Frank Milner). Between 1929 and 1931 he studied English literature at Auckland University College, where he met the third of his closest friends, J. A. W. Bennett. He edited a literary magazine, Phoenix, and with Bennett co-edited a Student Christian Movement magazine, Open Windows. In 1932 Bertram received a Diploma in Journalism and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.