My recent short book Dreadnoughts Unleashed has picked up its first review – five stars. Very cool! I’ve got high hopes for this one. It’s an experiment in format: eleven essays that run the gamut from the story of the man who invented OMG – Fisher – and the way he took down the British … More Five star review for ‘Dreadnoughts Unleashed’ – cool!
Over the years I’ve written a fair amount of stuff on my various interests – which range from the human condition to astrophysics to ship engineering and, inevitably, the people behind all those things. Normally such things disappear from view and that’s that, including blog posts – although it would be hard to beat the … More Dreadnoughts Unleashed – unleashed on Kindle!
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
I’m very excited to present the new cover of my book Blue Water Kiwis, New Zealand’s Naval Story 1870-2001. Blue Water Kiwis was first published in 2001 by Reed NZ Ltd, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Navy’s founding – though the book itself was about a good deal more than that, tracing … More Blue Water Kiwis: a new cover unleashed
It’s Jutland day again – 101 years since the great fleets of Britain and Germany clashed in the North Sea in what was expected to be a kind of second Trafalgar in which the German High Seas Fleet was supposed to be sunk. It wasn’t. The British won it strategically: the German fleet scuttled back … More The battle of Jutland and the Royal Navy’s steampunk computers
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’
I am a great fan of science fiction that’s plausible enough to be ‘scientific’, but which doesn’t take the ‘science’ so far as to be boring. In the miniseries that launched the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica a decade or so ago, Galactica took a direct hit from a nuke and survived with near-undiminished fighting capacity. Is … More Sci-fi writing tricks: balancing drama with plausibility
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
My book The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front is being published this week by Oratia Media.Here’s the cover, which I think is fantastic. I’m excited. And I hope you are too. It’s being released on 6 April and will be available in all good New Zealand bookshops – and online for … More Cover reveal – The New Zealand Experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front
It’s 75 years since Japanese aircraft attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor – triggering the Pacific war that finally ended in August 1945 after the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Where does the time go? For all the infamy of the moment, it wasn’t quite a total surprise. Relations between Japan and the … More Incredibly, it’s 75 years since Pearl Harbor and war in the Pacific
Matthew Wright 
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