Michael Wood (historian)

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Michael Wood (born Michael David Wood, July 23, 1948 in Manchester) is a popular English historian and broadcaster, presenter of numerous television documentary series.

He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and at Oriel College, Oxford. His special interest was Anglo-Saxon history, and this was the field in which he first made his name, coming to the screen in In Search of the Dark Ages, a BBC2 series in which he explored the lives of individual leaders of the period, including Athelstan, King Arthur and Eric Bloodaxe. Wood quickly became popular with many viewers for his blond good looks (he was humorously dubbed "the thinking woman's crumpet" by British newspapers), deep voice, and habit of wearing tight jeans and a sheepskin jacket. However, he draws his audience from all walks of life because of his ability to present history in striking and memorable ways. To date, he has over sixty documentary films to his name.

Wood's work is also well known in the United States, where it receives much airplay on PBS and on various cable television networks. The series Legacy (1992) is one of his more frequently broadcast documentaries on U.S. television.

In 2006, Wood joined the British School of Archaeology in Iraq campaign aiming to train and encourage new Iraqi archaeologists, and has lectured on the subject. 1

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Contents 1 Television series presented by Michael Wood 2 Documentaries presented by Michael Wood 3 Bibliography 4 External links

[edit] Television series presented by Michael Wood

• In Search of the Dark Ages (1981)
• In Search of the Trojan War (1985)
• Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England (1988)
• Art of the Western World (1989)
• Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization (1992)
• In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (1997)
• Conquistadors (2000)
• In Search of Shakespeare (2003)
• In Search of Myths and Heroes (2005)
• The Story of India (2007)

[edit] Documentaries presented by Michael Wood

• Saddam's Killing Fields (1993)
• Gilbert White: Nature Man (2006)

[edit] Bibliography

• In Search of the Dark Ages (1981)
• In Search of the Trojan War (1985)
• Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England (1988)
• Legacy: A Search for the Origins of Civilization (1992)
• The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey (1995)
• In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (1997)
• In Search of England: Journeys Into the English Past (1999)
• Conquistadors (2000)
• Shakespeare (2003)
• In Search of Myths and Heroes (2005)
• India: An Epic Journey Across the Subcontinent (2007)

[edit] External links

• At the BBC television website:
  • The Story of the Conquistadors
  • In Search of Shakespeare
  • In Search of Myths and Heroes
• Maya Vision — production company for some of Wood's documentaries.
  • Saddam's Killing Fields — production company's catalogue entry.
• In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great
• Michael Wood on Gilbert White and related BBC Four documentary article.