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 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]
Career
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]
Views
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]
Personal life
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]
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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