Michael Wood - Crumpet in jeans?

As the son of a history teacher I suppose it was inevitable that I would develop a keen interest in discovering and understanding the past. It’s in the blood. School nurtured it further but the enthusiasm was fleshed out by frequent visits to assorted castles, stately homes and archaeological sites dotted around the South of England.

The Romans held a special space for me, a flame kindled by lessons at the age of seven or eight and truly ignited by a visit to the Eternal City itself in my teens. Living in Essex we were also fortunate to have close

encounters with relics from the Anglo-Saxon era, including St Cedd’s simple stone chapel at Bradwell, Greensted Church and the Battle of Maldon site, its crossed-swords symbol and date 991 leaping out from our local Ordnance Survey map.

In my younger days, my thirst for knowledge wasn’t easily quenched by television. With Mum and Dad I might watch the occasional Chronicle documentary while Blue Peter may have offered tasty features and later there was Johnny Ball’s light-hearted children’s series Cabbages and Kings. I associated TV history for grown-ups with stuffy old blokes with beards and pipes, presenters like Rene Cutforth and Fyfe Robertson. Then along came Michael Wood. The mould was broken.

Here was a bloke who, while nonetheless a bit on the posh side, appeared not a lot older than me. Tall and striking, he strode around bleak moors and marshes as if he belonged, clad in fur-lined anorak and tight jeans. The media dubbed him the ‘thinking woman’s crumpet’ (presumably to counter-balance Joan Bakewell’s claim on the thinking man) but to me he was a presenter who, in his In Search of…. series, really brought his subject to life before my very eyes.

I think I missed the first programmes, tucked away on BBC2 when I was a struggling student in my second term at Exeter. However, when the second series aired in March 1981 on BBC1 I was quickly hooked. My contemporary diary noted: “Few presenters…have managed to inject such enthusiasm and imagery into the events of the Dark Ages” and nobody I’ve seen since has altered that view.

The blue touchpaper was lit by Wood’s In Search of Athelstan. While his granddad Alfred the Great has a slightly higher profile thanks to the myth of his failed audition for Bake Off, I’d never heard of the tenth-century king. This stirring tale of war, politics, religion and legal reform changed all that. There was no budget for a cast of hundreds in full costume, warpaint and weaponry recreating bloody battles, scenes we take for granted in modern historical documentaries. There were not a lot of relics or pictures to use either; it’s not called the Dark Ages for nothing. However, with a few images of flickering flames, crashing waves and a soundtrack of occasional bloodcurdling cries, it’s Wood’s calm, composed yet dramatic narration which is so effective at telling the story.

I was probably back in the family home for the rest of the series, including Eric Bloodaxe, Ethelred and William the Conqueror. Obviously most of the information imparted has long since slipped the memory but not the impact of Michael Wood’s style of presentation. A few years later I ensured I viewed the BBC’s Great Little Railways series, which included an episode tracking the line from Athens to Olympia. Obviously it held dual appeal for a train and history enthusiast like me, but it lacked one vital ingredient. Wood’s lucid narration was present and correct but the man himself was never on screen. Plenty of moustachioed Greeks but no clean-shaven Manchester academics. It would have resonated more with me had I visited the Peleponnese myself, but I wouldn’t explore that corner of Greece for another fourteen years, not by rail but aboard a Cosmos coach.

Since those early Dark Ages documentaries, Michael Wood’s series - or at least the ones I watched – have been few and far between. His broadcast contribution to the BBC Domesday 900 project struck a resounding chord in 1986 (William the Conqueror again) then five years lapsed before I tuned into another landmark series, Legacy: The Origins of Civilisation. Instead of misty moors in Northumberland, Michael got to mingle with the natives and enthuse reverently about artefacts and ancient ruins in far-flung foreign lands like Iraq, India and China.

In ’98, he was off to the Middle East again In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, crossing deserts and threading mountain passes by various modes of transport, including a horse in Iran, but the next time his face appeared on my telly he was back in the Dark Ages filling the extensive gaps in my knowledge of Alfred the Great. His face was considerably more lined but the familiar presentation techniques and production values were as brilliant as ever.

Excellent history presenters with charisma and credibility are plentiful these days. From Simon Schama to Lucy Worsley, Bettany Hughes to Dan Snow and Jonathan Meades to Neil Oliver, I have enjoyed many televisual trips into the past in their company. However, for all the superior special effects at their disposal, in my opinion none quite match the story-telling of Michael Wood.