I’m a New Zealand writer with over thirty years hands-on professional experience as a published author and in publishing. My main interests are in the sciences – physics, particularly, though I’m deeply curious about a lot of stuff, especially the human condition. I have qualifications in writing, music and anthropology among other fields, and hold multiple post-graduate degrees in history. I’m also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. I write a lot. My published writing, sold on merit, includes over 550 articles, academic papers, reviews, novellas and short stories, and over 50 books on topics ranging from travel guides to biography, engineering, military and social history. I’ve been published principally by Penguin Random House.
This week’s resignation of New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was something of a surprise, but for me not too surprising. Her reasons – not enough in the tank for another three-year term – were sound enough. If you haven’t got the energy left for the job, it’s professional to step down, and with an … More Jacinda Ardern’s resignation and social media
Back in 2021 I wondered whether the year could be worse than 2020. It was. And this year, 2022, has been worse still: for New Zealand, certainly, it’s featured a month-long occupation of Parliament grounds that ended with a street battle such as New Zealand has not seen since 1913. We have rampant inflation created … More Have a happy festive season!
This week’s obscure English word is yeet. It’s got several meanings, mostly as a verb associated with throwing useless things away forcefully. It’s also an urban expression for surprise. I quite like the verb form, though. According to YouTuber Scott Manley, the world’s biggest yeet is a thing known as Spin Launch. And both meanings … More The obscure word of the week is yeet
I haven’t posted here for a while, other than my regular word of the week. Real life and the task of writing for a living has got in the way. I have an enormous amount of work on. And other than that, real life is getting increasingly edgy. Here in New Zealand there is a … More Adventures with internet trolls and real world ogres
This week’s obscure English word is peristeronic. It means something relating to pigeons. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
This week’s obscure English word is doryphore. It’s a word coined in the mid-twentieth century by Sir Harold Nicholson, and means a critic who is both pedantic and persistent. I’ve attracted a few of those over the years, courtesy of my writing, not that any of them have had the guts to actually introduce themselves … More The obscure word of the week is doryphore
This week’s obscure English word is bardolatry. It means to like Shakespeare excessively. Really. I mean, sure, every high school kid was tortured by those stupid sonnets which were first made boring by the English teacher, then rammed at them for over-analysis. But apparently there are some people who get quite enthusiastic about the Immortal … More The obscure word of the week is bardolatry
This week’s obscure English word is concinnity. It’s a mass noun originating from the sixteenth century that means to harmoniously fit different parts of something together. A secondary meaning is to have an elegant literary style. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments that displays literary concinnity. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
This week’s obscure English word is adscititious. It means addition, and is thought to have emerged in the 17th century, derived from Latin. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2022
There’s no getting around the fact that my name is a bit popular. It’s led to numerous issues, including (a) an email begging me to return to TV, and (b) approaches from classics students wanting help with essays. In the case of (a) it turned out I’d been confused with Matthew Wright the British TV … More In which Google mistakes me for another Matthew Wright
Matthew Wright 
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