Bøker av Matthew Wright

"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, from their inception until the present day." -- Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro, from the ForewordCompiled from detailed research over a three-year period by esteemed historian Matthew Wright, this richly illustrated hardback is a must-have for the history reader. Factual detail is interspersed with the perspectives of those who have served in the corps, offering an intimate experience of military life for readers. With appendices that include rolls of honour, awards lists, and information on personnel and vehicles.

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 anthologies). There is also a discussion of the connection between quotability and classic status, where Wright asks what quotations can tell us about ancient reading habits. The implication is that Euripides actively participated in quotation culture by deliberately making certain portions of his plays stand out as especially quotable. Within classical antiquity, Euripides was the most widely quoted author apart from Homer. His plays are full of 'quotable quotes', which were repeated so often that they acquired a life of their own. Hundreds of famous verses from Euripidean drama circulated widely within the ancient world, even after the plays in which they originally featured became forgotten or vanished completely. Indeed, the majority of Euripides' tragedies now survive only in the form of scattered quotations, otherwise known to us as 'fragments'. It is this corpus of fragmentary quotations, along with his extant plays, that makes Euripides such an interesting case study in the world of quotation culture. This book is the first of its kind to understand Euripides' work through this lens, as well as opening up quotation culture as a major theme of interest within classical scholarship.

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 tangled story of mistakes, mishaps and misapprehensions leading up to the marriage of Moschion and Plangon. For most of the action the characters are at odds with one another owing to accidental delusions or deliberate deceptions, and it seems as if the marriage will be cancelled or indefinitely postponed; but ultimately everyone's problems are solved and the play ends happily. Samia is one of the best-preserved examples of fourth-century Greek comedy: celebrated within antiquity but subsequently lost for many years, it miraculously came back to light, in almost complete form, as a result of Egyptian papyrus finds during the 20th century.

In this fresh account of one of the 20th-centurys great New Zealanders, Matthew Wright approaches Bernard Freyberg the man rather than the more widely known figure of a military leader. What took a humble immigrant child in Wellington to become a hero in two wars, friend to literary giants and politicians, very private father and husband, and very public governor-general? Freyberg: A Lifes Journey is the most accessible biography on Tiny Freyberg yet, with numerous black and white photos.

"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 intense and disturbing; and, it deals with politics in a way which has resonances for ancient and modern democracies.