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!
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
Something slightly scary occurred to me the other day. Analysis of the Mw 7.8 quake that ripped through central New Zealand last November suggests it was awesomely complex. We usually imagine quakes being caused when one fault line moves. Or maybe two or three faults, because faults tend to exist in connected systems. And often, … More The earthquake apocalypse – it’s coming. Probably.
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
I don’t ‘do’ politics – I have totally no interest in it, not even if somebody wanted to revive the McGillicuddy Serious Party and promise free beer and French taunter insults every Friday night. Still, every so often something pops up that draws interest, as the other week when I discovered that the deputy leader … More About not getting bogged down in politics
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
It’s 75 years, today, since German paratroopers descended over Crete – the last act in the Balkan campaign of March-June 1941. It was also the first and only time that the Germans deployed their feared paratroopers as the spearhead of an invasion. New Zealanders were at the forefront of the defence. They were part of … More Battling the Fallschirmjager on Crete
