Bernard Diederich (18 July 1926 – 14 January 2020) was a New Zealand-born author, journalist, and historian. Diederich was born into an Irish-German family in Christchurch, where his father was a barman at the Empire Hotel. The family moved to rural Mākara, near Wellington, when he was 2, and he lived there until he was 16. In 2002 he wrote ‘The Ghosts of Makara: Growing Up Down-Under in a Lost World of Yesteryears’ about his childhood. He attended Makara Primary School, then Marist Brothers' School in Thorndon and St Patricks's College for two years in the early 1940s, playing in the 1st XV rugy team and representing the school in boxing.