Best Documentary 2015 - Documentary Ancients Greece - Documentary Films

Michael’s first experience of Greece did not start well. It was a school trip and they lost his luggage on the flight out: he was in the same clothes for over a week. Despite that, and thanks in part to his 17th birthday being spent at the ancient site of Olympia, home of the Olympic games, (and in the memorably named ‘Gorilla nightclub’ in Tolo – with fake gorillas hanging from the ceiling), Michael’s fascination for the ancient world began to develop.
It was post-PhD, as the Moses Finley Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, that Michael began to communicate his interest in the ancient world to a wider audience. He cut his teeth working as guest-lecturer on EasyCruise’s tours of the Classical world (where the ‘lecture hall’ was also the jacuzzi, bar and disco area!), writing books about ancient Greek history, and working with schools and organisations across the country to make the ancient world as accessible as possible to all. In 2008, he was asked to give an interview for a History Channel series of ‘Ancient Discoveries’ about ancient spying. Two years later, in 2010, he wrote and presented his first BBC documentary on BBC Four about Delphi.