Historian Michael Wood is like a schoolboy just bursting to tell you the latest. Of course, his latest is likely to be centuries ago. But in his documentaries, he has a knack for renewing the old days. It doesn't hurt that in his 60-odd films, Wood has chosen to revisit some of history's most fascinating figures.
Wood says at the outset of the series.
If those summaries sound a little flat, maybe it's because the magnitude of such adventures doesn't lend itself to one-sentence entries. Let the record show that Wood sustained 60 sandfly bites on just one arm while rafting on the Amazon. With this interlude Wood lends urgency to the months-long ordeal of Pizarro and his troops in the same wilderness. They were lost and pushed almost to madness, Wood reports. So hungry they ate bugs off the leaves.