David Olusoga
Author/Presenter
Film, TV & Theatre
Books
Presenting
Film, TV & Theatre
David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, author, presenter and BAFTA winning film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and presents the long-running BBC history series A House Through Time.
He produced and presented the award winning series - Black & British: A Forgotten History, Union With David Olusoga and the BAFTA winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. Among his other presenting credits are The World’s War, and The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files, Extra Life- a Short History of Living Longer and the landmark BBC arts series Civilizations.
He is the author or co-author of seven books including - Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year in 2014. Black & British A Short Essential History was a Waterstones Book Of The Year, Non-Fiction winner at the Quiz Writers' Choice Awards 2021 and Book of the Year, Children's non-fiction at the 2021 British Book Awards. His other titles are The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism, Civilizations: Encounters and the Cult of Progress and A House Through Time. He writes journalism and comment for The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Voice and BBC History Magazine.
David is a recipient of the BAFTA Special Award, the British Academy's Presidents Medal and the Norton Medlicott Medal For Services to History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, The Royal Society of Literature, The Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Historical Society.
Television
Production | Company | Notes |
---|---|---|
A HOUSE THROUGH TIME: TWO CITIES AT WAR 2024 | BBC | Series 5 |
UNION WITH DAVID OLUSOGA 2023 | BBC | 4 x 60' |
STATUE WARS: ONE SUMMER IN BRISTOL 2021 | Uplands Television / BBC | Executive Producer Follows Bristol’s mayor, Marvin Rees, as he and the city respond to the extraordinary events which followed the toppling of the Colston Statue in the summer of 2020. |
OUR NHS: A HIDDEN HISTORY 2021 | Uplands Television / BBC | David Olusoga meets nurses, doctors and health workers from overseas who have transformed the NHS in spite of hostility and discrimination. |
A HOUSE THROUGH TIME 2021 | BBC | Series 4 |
BARACK OBAMA TALKS TO DAVID OLUSOGA 2020 | BBC | |
A HOUSE THROUGH TIME 2020 | BBC | Series 3 |
THE UNWANTED: THE SECRET WINDRUSH FILES 2019 | Uplands Television / BBC | How black immigrants who made Britain their home came face to face with the government's 'hostile environment'. David Olusoga exposes the secret files behind the Windrush scandal. |
A HOUSE THROUGH TIME 2019 | BBC | Series 2 |
CIVILISATIONS 2018 | BBC | 9 part revival of the original series presented by Simon Shama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga |
A HOUSE THROUGH TIME 2018 | Nutopia/BBC | Series 1 |
A TIMEWATCH GUIDE 2016 - 2017 | BBC | Series 3 and 4 |
BLACK AND BRITISH 2016 | BBC | 4 x 60 |
BRITAIN'S FORGOTTEN SLAVE OWNERS 2015 | BBC | 2 X 60 |
THE WORLD'S WAR: FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS OF THE EMPIRE 2014 | BBC | 2 x 60 |
Books
Children's
Publication Details | Notes |
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BLACK HISTORY FOR EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR 2024 Macmillan Children's Books | with Kemi and Yinka Olusoga |
BLACK AND BRITISH: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY 2021 Macmillan Children's Books | 'Olusoga’s celebrated title is now available in a beautiful and absorbing illustrated format that invites readers from seven and up to pore over its pages. Maps and portrait galleries effortlessly convey how Black and British history have been woven together since the Roman invasion.' ― The Guardian 'It truly sings in picture book form with the history made even more vivid via a trove of old paintings, maps and photographs combined with bold artwork by Melleny Taylor and Jake Alexander.' Imogen Carter, Observer This beautiful hardback gift book is a stunning visual journey through Black British history for younger readers by award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga and illustrated by Jake Alexander and Melleny Taylor. The essential starting place for anyone who wants to learn about Black British History. David Olusoga’s thought provoking text charts the forgotten histories of Black people in Britain from Roman times right through to the present day. From Roman Africans guarding Hadrian’s Wall, to an African trumpeter in the court of Henry the Eighth, Black Georgians fighting for the abolition of slavery, Black soldiers fighting for Britain in the First World War, Windrush and right up today. These are the stories that brought us all together in this country. |
BLACK AND BRITISH: A SHORT, ESSENTIAL HISTORY 2020 Macmillan Children's Books | Winner of the 2021 Children's Illustrated & Non-Fiction book of the year, 'Black and British: A Short, Essential History,' is an essential introduction to Black British history for readers of 12 years old and up. |
Non-Fiction
Publication Details | Notes |
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2018 Profile | Companion to the major new BBC documentary series CIVILISATIONS, presented by Mary Beard, David Olusoga and Simon Schama. In Civilisations, David Olusoga travels the world to piece together the shared histories that link nations. In Part One, First Contact, we discover what happened to art in the great Age of Discovery, when civilisations encountered each other for the first time. Although undoubtedly a period of conquest and destruction, it was also one of mutual curiosity, global trade and the exchange of ideas. In Part Two, The Cult of Progress, we see how the Industrial Revolution transformed the world, impacting every corner, and every civilisation, from the cotton mills of the Midlands through Napoleon's conquest of Egypt to the decimation of both Native American and Maori populations and the advent of photography in Paris in 1839. |
BLACK AND BRITISH: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY 2016 Macmillan | In Black and British, award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offers readers a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello. |
THE WORLD'S WAR 2014 Head of Zeus | In a sweeping narrative, David Olusoga describes how Europe's Great War became the World's War - a multi-racial, multi-national struggle, fought in Africa and Asia as well as in Europe, which pulled in men and resources from across the globe. |
2010 Faber | Using shocking new archival evidence, The Kaiser's Holocaust is the definitive account of a genocide that was deliberately concealed for a century - a history that modern Germany has not yet come to terms with. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered in the Namibian deserts, the re-emergence of the Kaiser's holocaust poses a profound challenge to the notion that Nazi violence was an aberration in European history. |