Michael Wood | |
---|---|
Born | Michael David Wood 23 July 1948 Moss Side, Manchester, England |
Education | Manchester Grammar School |
Alma mater | Oriel College, University of Oxford (B A.) |
Occupation(s) | Historian, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker |
Notable work | In Search of the Dark Ages (1979) Great Railway Journeys (1980) In Search of the Trojan War (1985) In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (1998) The Story of India (2007) In Search of Beowulf (2009) The Story of England (2010) The Story of China (2016) |
Michael David Wood, OBE , FSA (born 23 July 1948) is an English historian and broadcaster. He has presented numerous well-known television documentary series from the late 1970s to the present day. Wood has also written a number of books on English history, including In Search of the Dark Ages , The Domesday Quest, The Story of England , and In Search of Shakespeare. [1] [2] He was appointed Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester in 2013.
Wood was born in Moss Side, Manchester, England. [3] He attended Heald Place Primary School in Rusholme. When he was eight, his family moved to Paulden Avenue, Wythenshawe, where he could see historic Baguley Hall from his bedroom window. He went to Benchill Primary School. At Manchester Grammar School, he developed an interest in theatre, playing Grusha in the first British amateur production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle and later Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet . He took A-levels in English, French and History. [4]
Wood studied History and English at Oriel College, Oxford, touring the United States for six weeks in his final year, and graduated with a second-class Bachelor of Arts degree. Later he undertook postgraduate research in Anglo-Saxon history at Oriel. Three years into his research for a DPhil, he left to become a journalist with ITV. [1] [4]
In the 1970s, Wood worked for the BBC in Manchester. He was first a reporter and then an assistant producer on current affairs programmes before returning to his love of history with his 1979–81 series In Search of the Dark Ages for BBC2. [5] He quickly became popular with female viewers for his blond good looks (he was humorously dubbed "the thinking woman's crumpet" by British newspapers), his deep voice and his habit of wearing tight jeans and a sheepskin jacket. [6] Wood's work is also well known in the United States, where it is often broadcast on PBS and on various cable television networks. The series Legacy (1992) is one of his more frequently broadcast documentaries on US television.
Since 1990, Wood has been a director of independent television production company Maya Vision International. In 2006, he joined the British School of Archaeology in Iraq campaign, the aim of which was to train and encourage new Iraqi archaeologists, and he has lectured on the subject. [7] In 2013, Wood joined the University of Manchester as Professor of Public History. [8]
Wood has stated that while empires were often built on the power of swords, India alone created an empire of spirit. [9] He introduces India's history and culture in two sweeping sentences as: "Over the next 3000 years Greeks and Kushans, Turks and Afghans, Mughals and British, Alexander, Tamburlaine and Babur, will all come and fall under India’s spell. And India’s greatest strength, one known only to the oldest civilizations, will be to adapt and change, to use the gifts of history and to accept its wounds, but somehow, magically, to be always India." [10]
Wood favours returning artefacts looted during the age of imperialism. He has publicly supported moving the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum back to Attica. [11]
Wood has termed the destruction in Gaza in the Israel-Hamas war more thorough than any ancient siege. [12]
Wood seemed to suggest[ when? ] that he favoured adding a statue of African hero/heroine when a movement started to remove Oxford's Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel College. [13]
Wood's girlfriend for ten years, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was the journalist and broadcaster Pattie Coldwell. [14] [15]
Wood lives in north London with his wife, television producer Rebecca Ysabel Dobbs, with whom he has two daughters. [16]
Wood has been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Royal Society of the Arts. [17] [18] In 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Sunderland University. [19] This was followed by an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Leicester in 2011 and in 2015 he was awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy. [20] Wood received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Lacaster University in 2007 and the University of Winchester in 2021. [21] [22]
Wood is the president of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding. [23]
Wood was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2008. [24]
Wood was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to public history and broadcasting. [25] He expressed that an opportunity had been missed to replace the word Empire with Excellence in OBE. [26]
BAFTA-winning broadcaster David Olusoga has said that he was inspired as a teenager to become a historian by having watched Wood on television. [27]
Historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsely has stated that Wood and his unconventional documentary format inspired her when she was a child. [28]
Wood is a recipient of the Historical Association’s Medlicott Medal and has served as a Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces. [29]
Wood has been a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a Trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. [30]
The Wall Street Journal has described Story of India as "the gold standard" of documentary history making’. [29]
The Independent has called The Story of England "the most innovative history series ever made for TV." [31]
The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, has said that The Story of China had "transcended the barriers of ethnicity and belief and brought something inexplicably powerful and touching to the TV audience." [32]
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In Search of the Dark Ages is a BBC television documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, first shown between 1979 and 1981. It comprises eight short films across two series, each focusing on a particular character from the history of England prior to the Norman Conquest, a period popularly known as the Dark Ages. It is also the title of a book written by Wood to support the series, that was first published in 1981.
The Great British Story: A People's History is a 2012 documentary in eight parts written and presented by Michael Wood looking at history through the eyes of ordinary people airing on the BBC.
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