A powerfully human and emotional illustrated history of New Zealand’s war experience, focusing on material culture and social history. From trenches to department stores, internment camps to classrooms, memorial services to Queen Carnivals, Holding on to Home provides a regionally broad, multi-faceted look at this historical conflict. It reveals how soldiers and `home’ were interconnected, and how New Zealanders, individually and collectively, faced the Great War. Based on original research, this new emphasis helps reveal new understandings of the War that are long overdue, broadening the view of who New Zealanders at war were, what they treasured and why.

Featuring all-new photographs of objects from Te Papa’s history collections and other institutions nationwide, personal letters and diaries, photographs, propaganda and advertising, Holding on to Home places objects and material/archival culture at the centre of the history they evoke, and draws out their role in maintaining relationships and identities – as well as their place in collective memory. "