Featured Author: Michael Wood

Michael Wood was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oriel College Oxford where he did postgraduate research in Anglo-Saxon history. Since then he has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and film maker. His films have centred on history, but have included travel (Great Railway Journeys of the World; River Journeys; The Sacred Way); politics (Saddam's Killing Fields: abou the destruction of the Marsh Arabs of South Iraq) and cultural history (Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail, 1999). Unlike many of his fellow TV historians he does not rely on a dramatisation of history but revisits the scenes of great events relying on his own skills as a presenter to take us into the history.  He is particularly good at getting to the history behind the myth whilst helping us to enjoy the myth and respect the culture it came from. This open mindedness and enthusiasm transfer brilliantly to his books, some of which we feature below.  He was made a fellow of Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2001.

In 1086, Domesday Book, perhaps the most remarkable historical document in existence, was compiled. This detailed survey of England and its people was made at the behest of the Norman king, William the Conqueror. It was called Domesday, the day of judgement, because 'like the day of judgement, its decisions are unalterable'. Wood’s skilful analysis of the manuscript unravels not only the Anglo-Norman world but also the vestiges of the Anglo-Saxon, Roman and even the Iron Age cultures that preceded it.

In Conquistadors Michael Wood travels in the footsteps of some of the greatest of the Spanish adventurers from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Macchu Picchu. He experiences first hand the reality of epic journeys, such as those made by Hernan Cortes, and the Pizarros, and explores the turbulent and terrifying events surrounding the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires, and the great journeys of exploration in this “New World”.
As well as bringing history alive with evocative text and stunning pictures, Michael Wood grapples with the moral legacy of the European invasion. The epic stories in this book are of conquest, heroism and greed, but Wood’s exploration of the events also highlights the way society has changed the way they are viewed. 

Michael Wood goes in search of four of the most famous myths in the world: Shangri-la, the Golden Fleece, the Queen of Sheba, and the Holy Grail. These four romantic journeys take him to some of the remotest and most exciting places on earth including Western Tibet, the mountains of Georgia and the Caucasus, the plains of Southern Iraq, to the coasts of Ethiopia Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Michael asks the question: why do such legends still captivate us today? 

Michael Wood retraces Alexander the Great’s amazing journey from Greece to India, searching for the truth behind the legend and experiencing the tremendous scale of his achievements.  Using the ancient historians as his guides, Wood follows Alexander’s journey as closely as possible, crossing deserts and rivers, from Turkey to India.  His descriptive travelogue makes the unravelling of this ancient adventure somehow more immediate.  As the journey progresses, he recreates the drama of Alexander’s epic marches and bloody battles, finding proof along the way of the survival of the legends surrounding Alexander, a leader whose life has excited the world’s imagination for 2,000 years both as hero and monster.

Considering the known facts about Shakespeare’s life are markedly slim, there are a surprising number of published biographies.  Michael Wood’s was the first television biography and as usual he approaches his subject as a quest to get inside the times of his subject brilliantly recreating the age of the Reformation, the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and the colonization of the Americas.  A book full of fresh insights and fascinating new discoveries.