Justin David Pollard (born 30 January 1968) is a British historian, television producer and writer.
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Pollard is a popular historian and screenwriter working in the field of feature films, television and print. He was born in Hertfordshire and was educated at St Albans School and Downing College, Cambridge where he graduated with honours in archaeology and anthropology.
After college he worked for a year as an archaeologist at the Museum of London on the excavation of Thomas Becket’s old monastery of Merton Priory. During that time he also developed an educational programme for schools visiting the Surrey Heath Archaeological and Heritage Trust in Surrey for which the Trust was awarded the Graham Webster Laurels at the British Archaeology Awards for their contribution to education in archaeology.
Leaving the Museum of London in 1990, Pollard moved into documentary production initially as a researcher, and then a writer and producer. His television credits include development and scripting for the BBC’s QI, Channel Four’s Time Team including writing the Christmas special Time Team’s History of Britain, script editing Bob Geldof’s Geldof in Africa, and developing Terry Jones' Barbarians. He has also written the 3x1 hour history of the Egyptian New Kingdom for the BBC and Lion Television, Egypt’s Golden Empire, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. As well as these he has written and produced documentaries on everything from cannibalism amongst the Dongria Kondh in India to the career of Vlad the Impaler, for presenters including Terry Jones, Bettany Hughes, Alexei Sayle, Tony Robinson and Bob Geldof, and broadcasters including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, A&E, Discovery Channel, Canal+, ZDF, S4C, ITN and others.
Apart from producing documentaries, Pollard runs a company that provides historical and script consultancy for historical feature films and television dramas. He has a long association with Indian director Shekhar Kapur and was historical consultant on his features Elizabeth, The Four Feathers", and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age coaching cast (including Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Richard Attenborough, Fanny Ardant, Vincent Cassel, John Gielgud and Heath Ledger) and crew in the historical background to the stories. He has also worked closely in developing other history-based features for directors, including Gillies MacKinnon, Sam Mendes, Jan De Bont and Neil Jordan. He was the historical consultant on Joe Wright's film, Atonement and has recently worked on two movies with Johnny Depp - Alice in Wonderland (2010 film) directed by Tim Burton and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides directed by Rob Marshall.
In television he was historical consultant for all four series of the Showtime hit The Tudors starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and has recently worked on Camelot (TV series) starring Joseph Fiennes for Starz (TV network).
Pollard is a regular columnist for History Today and BBC History Magazine and a contributor to the QI books and Annuals including The Book of General Ignorance. His new book Boffinology is released in October 2010. In it he reveals the true stories behind 100 of the greatest scientific discoveries.