'Wood had once called himself ‘a bit of a rebel’, but equally saw himself as serving an old and honourable tradition. This was true to his Puritan ancestry and to his Manchester upbringing. It was equally true to Jowett’s Balliol where his mind blossomed, and to Fairbairn’s Mansfield College where doubts honestly faced steeled his will. When he sailed for Sydney University, he said goodbye to the eminent reputation among English historians that would almost certainly have been his. Instead he gained the affectionate and enduring respect of generations of Australian students. This immensely interesting biography deals with Wood as a teacher and writer of History, but also with the jovial ‘Woody’ of student skit and verse which might gently tease but never savaged him. It is at once a study of the University Professor and of the man seen in the context of that family life in which he took huge delight.' (Publication summary)
