This book tells the story of HMS New Zealand, a battlecruiser paid for by the government of New Zealand at the height of its pro-Imperial 'jingo' era in 1909, when Britain's ally Japan was perceived as a threat in Australasia and the Pacific. Born of the collision between New Zealand's patriotic dreams and European politics, the tale of HMS New Zealand is further wrapped in the turbulent power-plays at the Admiralty in the years leading up to the First World War. The ship went on to have a...

Numerous books have been written about Greek tragedy, but almost all of them are concerned with the 32 plays that still survive. This book, by contrast, concentrates on the plays that no longer exist. Hundreds of tragedies were performed in Athens and further afield during the classical period, and even though nearly all are lost, a certain amount is known about them through fragments and other types of evidence.Matthew Wright offers an authoritative two-volume critical introductio...

How key concepts in modern physics came from the work of a New Zealander whom Einstein labelled ‘a second Newton’.By the mid-nineteenth century, physicists believed they had discovered the last secrets of the universe. Then a new world opened up: one of waves, particles, and new, fundamental forces. This mysterious world swiftly captured the public imagination, not least because of the technical revolution that emerged from it, giving the world everything from radi...

‘Those Who Have the Courage will be a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in the military and social history of New Zealand. It is a comprehensive history of the Royal New Zealand Armoured Corps, the Mounted Rifles and predecessor units …’ — Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, from the Foreword The product of painstaking, multi-year research by esteemed historian and author Matthew Wright, this richly illustrated hardback is a must-have for the history reader. Part 1 covers the co...

On her search for answers, Jill's adventure is crashed by Rocket, a crazy old scientist. Along with troubled Kyle, they find themselves on a marvellous journey of wonders and dangers along The Road. Curiosity and desperate circumstances lead them to leave their homeland of Nowhere and set out to meet the Lord of the Way in a far country. On their travels they encounter extraordinary people and places, many a dangerous enemy, and in the process discover who they are and where they're really...

From hero to zero, coal has taken New Zealand on a rollercoaster ride since its glory days as the hero fuel of colonial-age New Zealand.Coal was the fuel on which the colony grew the stuff that made possible the heating, cooking and lighting essential to family life, a lifestyle exalted during two World Wars and a depression. Coal was pivotal to the country’s growth, even as everybody grumbled about the mess. The men who dug it out of the ground had to keep digging, come what may...

The surviving works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been familiar to readers and theatregoers for centuries; but these works are far outnumbered by their lost plays. Between them these authors wrote around two hundred tragedies, the fragmentary remains of which are utterly fascinating.In this, the second volume of a major new survey of the tragic genre, Matthew Wright offers an authoritative critical guide to the lost plays of the three best-known tragedians. (The other ...

I STARTED OUT WITH NOTHIN', AND I’VE STILL GOT MOST OF IT LEFT'.It remains one of the most remarkable breakthroughs in music history. Until New Year's Eve, 2006, former hobo Steven Gene Wold, a 65 year-old blues musician, playing a beat-up, three-string guitar (aka The Three-String Trance Wonder, or 'the biggest piece of shit in the world') and stomping on a wooden box with a Mississippi motorcycle plate stuck on (aka The Mississippi Drum Machine), was hardly known outside his tiny ...

"Orestes" was one of Euripides' most popular plays in antiquity. Its plot, which centres on Orestes' murder of his mother Clytemnestra and its aftermath, is exciting as well as morally complex; its presentation of madness is unusually intense and disturbing; it deals with politics in a way which has resonances for both ancient and modern democracies; and, it has a brilliantly unexpected and ironic ending. Nevertheless, "Orestes" is not much read or performed in modern times. Why should thi...

**Presenting a new approach to Euripides' plays, this book explores the playwright's ancient tragedies in relation to quotation culture.**Treating extant works and lost works side-by-side, Matthew Wright presents a selective survey of ways in which Euripidean tragedy was quoted within antiquity, both in social contexts (on the comic stage, at symposia, in law courts, in education) and in different literary genres (drama, biography, oratory, philosophy, literary scholarship, history and ant...

Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history, twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians. As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has pose...

Matthew Wright brings Menander's Samia to life by explaining how it achieves its comic effects and how it fits within the broader context of fourth-century Greek drama and society. He offers a scene-by-scene reading of the play, combining close attention to detail with broader consideration of major themes, in an approach designed to bring out the humour and nuance of each individual moment on stage, while also illuminating Menander's comic art.The play dramatizes a tangle...