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. He was appointed Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester in 2013.
A former safecracker is lured back for one last job by an old flame and business partner. This is filmed in the style of a 1940s 'film-noir.'
Release Date2016-12-05
Charactersd Victim
Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary woman in a time of revolution. Born during the reign of Henry VIII, Mary Arden is the daughter of a Warwickshire farmer, but she marries into a new life in the rising Tudor middle class in Stratford-upon-Avon. There she has eight children, three of whom die young. Her husband becomes mayor, but is bankrupted by his shady business dealings. Faced with financial ruin, religious persecution and power politics, the family is the glue that keeps them together until they are rescued by Mary's successful eldest son - William Shakespeare!
Release Date2015-02-12
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Himself - Presenter
Gilbert White was a "parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist and ornithologist. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Michael Wood explores the scientific life of the remarkable man.
Release Date2006-06-28
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Presenter
Over the last 40 years, China has been transformed out of all recognition. The scale of its growth and the sheer speed of change has been astonishing. The country has seen the largest lifting of people out of poverty that has ever taken place in human history. How did an impoverished and backward communist country become an engine of global capitalism? What lies ahead for this economic behemoth?
Release Date2019-07-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Vote Count3
Conquistadors is a documentary retelling of the story of the Spanish expeditions of conquest of the Americas. In this 4-part series historian Michael Wood travels in the footsteps of the Spanish expeditions, from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Macchu Picchu.
Release Date2000-01-01
DepartmentCrew
JobPresenter
Charactersd
Episode Count4
Vote Count1
Complete four part series exploring the life of the world's greatest and most famous writer. Presenter-led, mixing travel, adventure, live action interviews and specially shot documentary and live action sequences with the RSC on the road. A history series - it focuses not on the plays, but on the history and sets the life of the poet in the extraordinary times in which he lived. We are introduced to the dark world of Queen Elizabeth's police state - a time of surveillance, militarism and foreign wars. We are reminded that Shakespeare lived through the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the colonisation of the New World and the beginnings of British power in America. But most importantly Shakespeare also lived through England’s Cultural Revolution: an enforced split with the old medieval English spirit world which was to lead the English people into a brave new Protestant future.
Release Date2003-06-28
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Himself - Host
Episode Count4
Vote Count4
Michael Wood explores the life, works and influence of one of the world's greatest storytellers who died 2,000 years ago. When an Elizabethan literary critic said that the witty soul of Ovid lived on in 'honey tongued Shakespeare', they were just stating the obvious. Ovid, everyone knew, was simply the most clever, sexy and funny poet in the western tradition. His Metamorphoses, it has often been said, is the most influential secular book in European literature.
Release Date2017-11-16
Charactersd Himself - Presenter
Series looking at history through the eyes of ordinary people. Rulers and royals, lords and ladies have all had their say down the centuries, what were the last 1,600 years like for everyday Britons?
Release Date2012-05-25
DepartmentCreator
JobCreator
Charactersd Presenter
Episode Count[ 8 ]
Michael Wood embarks on a great historical adventure, exploring the stories, people and landscapes that have helped create China's distinctive character and genius over four thousand years.
Release Date2016-01-21
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Episode Count6
Vote Count4
Michael Wood explores village life in 14th century England, a time of plague, war and famine. Through the use of a remarkably complete set of documentary records, he explores one village - that of Codicote in Hertfordshire - looking at its boom times and its poorer times. Wood brings the period to life by focusing in on one family, that of the poor peasant Christina Cok, her father Hugh, her estranged husband William, and her children John and Alice. By looking at the poorest members of Codicote's society, Wood approaches his history from the bottom-up rather than taking the traditional historical approach of top-down, 'kings and barons' story-telling.
Release Date2008-05-05
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Charactersd Host
Release Date2005-01-01
Charactersd Narrator
In Search of the Dark Ages was a television series, written and presented by Michael Wood, and first shown in 1979. It is also the title of a book written by Wood to support the series, which was published in 1981. The television series consisted of a series of separate programmes, hence the collective title is often written as In Search of ... The Dark Ages. It began with In Search of Offa, recorded in 1978 by BBC Manchester, and shown on 2 January 1979. Subsequent programmes in the first series were on Boadicea, King Arthur and Alfred the Great, shown with a re-run of Offa over successive nights in March 1980. The first series was such a success when shown in an off-peak slot on BBC Two that a second series was broadcast in 1981, with subjects including William the Conqueror, Ethelred the Unready, Athelstan and Eric Bloodaxe.
Release Date1979-01-02
DepartmentCreator
JobCreator
Charactersd
Episode Count[ 4 ]
Vote Count1
The worldwide Nazi search for archaeological and historical support for their beliefs in the Aryan (German) master race.
Release Date1999-01-01
Charactersd Narrator
Vote Count3
Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.
Charactersd Presenter
First broadcast on October 2, 1989, these 18 original 30-minute episodes provide a panorama of 2000 years of architecture, painting and sculpture, and studies the art masterpieces as reflections of the Western culture that produced them.
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Release Date2018-12-25
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Episode Count5
Groundbreaking series in which Michael Wood tells the story of one place throughout the whole of English history. The village is Kibworth in Leicestershire in the heart of England - a place that lived through the Black Death, the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution and was even bombed in World War Two.
Release Date2010-09-21
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Episode Count6
Vote Count1
Michael Wood argues that the most important and influential British kings were a father, son and grandson who lived over a thousand years ago during the age of the Vikings.
Release Date2013-08-06
Charactersd Self - Presenter
Episode Count3
Vote Count3
Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.
Release Date2009-05-28
DepartmentCrew
JobPresenter
Episode Count1
Sir Ian McKellen reads the poetry, Michael Wood traces the journey on the ground. Together they conjure up the extraordinary life, times and words of China’s greatest poet, Du Fu. In this film, the first to ever be made about Du Fu in the west, Michael follows his tracks by road, train and riverboat. Along the way, he meets ordinary people, dancers and musicians, who help to tell the amazing story of a poet whose words have resonated through the centuries, describing the experiences of ordinary people caught up in war, corruption, famine and natural disasters. "I am one of the privileged. If my life is so bitter, then how much worse is the life of the common people?"
Release Date2020-04-05
Vote Count2
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great was a BBC documentary television series first shown in 1998. It was written and presented by British historian and broadcaster Michael Wood. Wood retraced the travels of Alexander the Great, from Vergina in Macedonia, where his father Philip II of Macedon died and Alexander was proclaimed king, through seventeen present-day countries to the borders of India and back to Mesopatamia, where he died. Whereas most of Wood's documentary series had titles beginning "In Search of...", the title of this series reflected a slightly different approach. The series was directed by David Wallace.
Release Date1998-07-14
Episode Count4
Vote Count7
What can the past teach us about the present? Come along as charismatic historian Michael Wood (The Story of India) travels the globe to trace the origins of six great civilizations: Iraq, India, China, Egypt, Central America, and Western Europe. Each journey offers surprising perspectives on questions that matter today-about the environment, the individual, society, and spirituality.
Release Date1991-08-13
Episode Count6
Vote Count1
Working in ancient Greece, Phineas is an established myth writer who has finished his latest tale about a father and a son. He meets with two young, ambitious Roman publishers, Julius and Atilus, in an attempt to sell it and put his work into the world.
Release Date2023-07-29
For over two millennia, India has been at the centre of world history. But how did India come to be? What is India? These are the big questions behind this intrepid journey around the contemporary subcontinent. In this landmark series, historian and acclaimed writer Michael Wood embarks on a dazzling and exciting expedition through today's India, looking to the present for clues to her past, and to the past for clues to her future. The journey takes the viewer through majestic landscapes and reveals some of the greatest monuments and artistic treasures on Earth. From Buddhism to Bollywood, from mathematics to outsourcing, Michael Wood discovers India's impact on history - and on us.
Release Date2007-08-24
Episode Count6
Vote Count9
Release Date2005-05-01
Episode Count4
Vote Count2
Michael Wood examines how far the historical and archeological evidence matches with the tale of the Trojan War.
Release Date1985-02-24
Episode Count6
Vote Count7
