Michael Wood

Wood was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society until 2007. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by Sunderland University. This was followed by the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Leicester in 2011, and in 2015 he was awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy. Having previously acted as President of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, in 2017 he accepted the position of Honorary Life Vice President, offered in recognition of his work on the documentary series Michael Wood's Story of England. Michael Wood is currently the president of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, an organization founded in 1965 to promote understanding and friendship between the British and the Chinese people.

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, which aimed to train and encourage new Iraqi archaeologists, and he has lectured on the subject. In 2013, Wood joined the University of Manchester as Professor of Public History.

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. 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. 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 US television.

Michael David Wood, OBE (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.