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
This coming week marks the 108th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, a war that was meant to be over in just a few months but where the fighting did not end until November 1918. The death toll was apocalyptic, particularly on the Western Front that ran from the Channel coast to … More The war to end all wars, apparently
The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War and produced casualties of similar scale to the disastrous ‘pushes’ on the Western Front. Over six thousand British sailors died and more than 2,550 German, all in a hectic afternoon and night. More than half of the British were lost in … More Remembering history – the battle of Jutland, 116 years on
It’s Anzac Day: memorial day in New Zealand and Australia when we remember the dead of all our wars. Why choose then, and not 11 November, to mark all war dead? For both Australia and New Zealand the emotional power of the Gallipoli campaign was enormous: after the war, this became the moment when both … More Lest we forget: a reminder of the folly of war
One hundred and six years ago this week, war clouds loomed close across Europe. Austria-Hungary’s 28 July declaration of war on Serbia ended four weeks of tension and posturing. By 4 August the continent was at war – a moment that has gone down in history as a demonstration of the way in which pride, … More Remembering the folly of humanity
It’s 76 years this month since the end of the Second World War in Europe – just over three-quarters of a century since the end of the effort by the world’s democracies to survive against a rising tide of totalitarianism. The fall of Nazi Germany ended the fascist side of that totalitarian system and enabled … More Remembering the importance of democracy
To mark New Zealand’s memorial day this year I’m re-posting an except from one of my books, which I published a few years back. Enjoy. Today, 25 April, is New Zealand’s memorial day – Anzac Day. It’s the day when we remember all our war dead, more than half of whom died in just one … More Lest we forget: Gallipoli, the Western Front and war memory
My recent biography of Bernard Freyberg – Freyberg: A Life’s Journey – was explicitly not a military story. His career was, of course, primarily defined by his army life, from First World War action-hero to Second World War commander. But I had already written a biography of his wars and what his field actions meant … More History is a discussion, not a final truth
I’ve lost count of the number of copies of Freyberg: A Life’s Journey I’ve signed in the past six weeks. Really. I’ve been out and about promoting the book, visiting bookshops, giving talks, meeting people – and signing. Mostly on weekends because that’s when customers usually buy. My publicist at Oratia, Belinda, worked hard to … More Touring the bookstores with ‘Freyberg: A Life’s Journey’
The essence of a biography, at least to me, is exploring the character of a person. Merely knowing what somebody did in their life isn’t enough: we have to know why. And that, of course, is also what novellists do. This doesn’t mean that a biographer makes stuff up. On the contrary, the data is … More Why writing a biography is a bit like writing a novel
Matthew Wright 
You must be logged in to post a comment.