There was a headline the other week on the Fairfax news site ‘Stuff’ about a southern New Zealand high school that was forbidding children to wear warm headgear – beanies – despite temperatures dropping into the negatives. Based on the report it appeared to me to be simple power assertion. Beanies weren’t in the uniform, … More When power assertion is disguised by the rules…
31 May is the anniversary of the largest naval battle of the First World War, when the great fleets of Britain and Germany came to blows. It was a day of horror as ships blew up and went to the bottom with virtually all their crews – a grim toll of 3,058 German and 6,784 … More Remembering the battle of Jutland
This week marks the 73rd anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. To me the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 was one of the pivotal points in what Eric Hobsbawm has called the ‘short’ twentieth century – the era from 1914 to 1992 that began with the First World War … More Why we’re so lucky that we won the Second World War
A few years back I discovered something about myself in in an academic magazine. They’d reviewed my major book on the New Zealand Wars and, according to the reviewer, I’d apparently written this book to intentionally displace a particular Oxford professor in the public eye. It was the first I knew of this supposed motive. … More All about the history of Hawke’s Bay, and some other things
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2018
This week New Zealand marks Anzac Day which, with Australia, is our day of memorial to the dead of all our wars. It is a solemn moment when both nations pause to remember those who died, remember the sacrifices made in the wars of the twentieth century, particularly, in order that we can have the … More Remembering Gallipoli and the Anzacs
The best lecturer I ever had at university, Lucie Halberstam, passed away on Tuesday this week at age 87. Lucie was a consummate historian, passionate about her subject, and absolutely devoted to teaching her students. I learned a great deal from Lucie while an undergrad and subsequently post-graduate student at Victoria University in the early … More A quiet tribute to a great teacher
