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.
I’ve had little time to blog of late, though I have had every intention of returning to a regular schedule when time is available, at this stage mid-2023. In the interim, though, I’ve discovered something disturbing about the WordPress.com blogging platform. I’ve been running a ‘free’ blog via WordPress.com since 2010, largely because I put … More Has WordPress turned blogs into clickbait sites?
News across the global financial system has been a worry this week. The collapse of the SVB in California was followed by worries about Credit Suisse, one of Europe’s largest banks, whose share price plunged after its largest shareholder couldn’t provide it a loan. That triggered a plunge in Asian stocks and a rush for … More Do we face a new global financial crisis?
This week’s massive cyclone across New Zealand’s North Island is unprecedented. It produced more widespread damage than the last such storm, Cyclone Bola of 1988. There is some evidence of even larger storms in the fifteenth century, knocking down swathes of trees. But nothing in historical times. My home district, Hawke’s Bay, took a heavy … More The tragic human cost of Cyclone Gabrielle
I haven’t posted much on this blog of late. Time presses, and the reality of blogging is that time put into it is time taken away from work I have to do to pay the bills. I can’t realistically sustain a weekly schedule just now. Just to put that into perspective, right now I have … More Podcasting instead of blogging
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
Matthew Wright 
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