Throughout his career he won the Feltex Television Writers' Award (1980), Winston Churchill Fellowship (1980), Fulbright Visiting Writers' Fellowship (1988), Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1988), NZ Literary Fund Award (1987 and 1989), Wattie Book of the Year Award (1984 and 1990), NZ Book Award (non-fiction) (1978) and was Burns Fellow at the University of Otago (1998–99).