Historian and broadcaster Michael Wood will join us to talk his travels in China and the making of ‘The Story of China’, a documentary currently showing on BBC 2.

For over thirty years now, historian and broadcaster Michael Wood has brought history alive for viewers and readers in Britain, the US and worldwide. He is the author of several highly praised and best selling books and well over one hundred documentary films, among them In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great and The Story of India, described by the Wall Street Journal as “still the gold standard” of documentary history making, and by the New York Times as ‘among the best TV history documentaries ever made’.  The Independent called his Story of England  ‘the most innovative history series ever on TV’. His most recent TV work includes the series King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons (2013) and Shakespeare’s Mother (2015).  His Story of China is being transmitted on BBC 2 this spring.

Michael was born in Manchester, and educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oriel College Oxford, where he did research in Anglo-Saxon history, on which he has written many academic articles. He is a contributor to The Circle of Shakespeare (Cambridge 2015) and has written about the making of history documentaries in The Impact of History? (Routledge, 2015) . He is currently Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts and the Society of Antiquaries, and a governor of the RSC. He was recently awarded the Historical Association’s Medlicott Medal for ’outstanding services and current contributions to History’ and in autumn 2015 received the British Academy President’s Medal for services to history and outreach.