Its Jutland day this 31 May – 1 June; 104 years since the biggest naval battle of the First World War. My great uncle, H. C. Wright, was in it – safely behind 12 inches of armour aboard the super-dreadnought HMS Orion, with a Graham Navyphone clamped against one ear, passing on targeting information to … More It’s 104 years since the Battle of Jutland
It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Jutland this week – the clash of British and German fleets on 31 May-1 June 1916 – and one of the tangible connections I have to it, aside from my professional historical work, is through my great uncle’s old navy mess fork. It was issued to him when … More This week in history: Jutland and my great uncle’s navy mess fork
It is 104 years since the First War began, this month – and a century, this year, since it ended. The nations involved in it had all variously been involved in longer wars before. And the main combatants fought a longer war later: the Second World War, which pitted the same major nations against each … More Echoes of the guns of August – why we remember the First World War so poignantly
It’s a century, this June 7, since the British blew up Messines Ridge, part of the front line of the Ypres salient where they had been wedged against the Germans since the end of 1914. The blast involved most of the 1,307,800 pounds of ammonal, dynamite, gun cotton and blasting gelatine TNT, amatol and other explosives … More ‘Blowing’ Messines ridge – a century ago today
It’s always a bit nerve-racking when a book’s released: will it do well? How will it be reviewed? My book The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front has been out a couple of weeks. It’s been published and is being sold old-school style – in print, through the brick-and-mortar physical channels of … More Latest news about ‘The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front’
Exciting news folks – my book The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front is being released today. It’s my first military title in years. In it, I ask one question: what did New Zealand’s two biggest campaigns of the First World War do to those who fought them? Exploring that answer spans … More The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front
A century ago – 1 July 1916 – British soldiers climbed out of their trenches on the Somme front and began advancing towards trenches held by the German Fourth Army. So opened the huge Somme offensive, a combined British-French effort to break the German lines and push through into open country beyond. The plan seemed … More It’s a century since Britain’s advance on the Somme
My visit last year to Sir Peter Jackson’s amazing ‘Knights of the Sky’ exhibition at the Omaka Aviation Heritage centre – one of the best air museums on the planet – raised all sort of questions for me as a historian. The point of difference about this exhibition – and, for that matter, about Jackson’s … More History is more than the sum of its parts
It’s the centenary of the Battle of Jutland today – the first and only clash of the great fleets during the First World War. On the misty afternoon of 31 May 1916, off the coast of Denmark, the British and German fleets came to blows in classic form: a tussle between their lighter battlecruiser forces, … More It’s a century today since the great clash of dreadnoughts
I’ve been posting the last couple of weeks about Sir Peter Jackson’s amazing Knights of the Sky exhibition at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre near Blenheim, New Zealand. It’s one of the best collections of WW1 aircraft and memorabilia in the world. A status given depth by the fact that it features several life-size dioramas … More Among the Knights of the Sky at Omaka
Matthew Wright 
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