David has made our industry and society a better place, and this Bafta special award couldn’t be more deserved.” “He represents the best of what television can do: its power to inspire, educate and challenge. His commitment and bravery in reappraising how history is presented through television is inspiring. Jane Millichip, the CEO of Bafta, said Olusoga had “made an outstanding contribution, not just to the television community but to our society and culture. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Ī special commemoration at the Bafta TV awards will pay tribute to Olusoga’s work and his ongoing legacy and impact upon the TV industry and society. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. I’d like to think some of the work I have done on series like A House Through Time, and Black and British: a Forgotten History have played a role in broadening the sorts of histories TV now explores and celebrates.” skip past newsletter promotion “So history programming – like TV in general – has traditionally struggled to broaden its lens and include the stories and experiences of working-class people and minorities. He said: “Not only was it predominantly middle-class people who got to work in TV, that lack of diversity (in all its forms) within the industry meant that programmes very often viewed the UK and the world from the perspective of better-off, more middle-class people. Olusoga said British TV was a medium dominated by the well-connected and the privileged. He regularly contributes to the Guardian, including for the recent series Cotton Capital, which investigates the Guardian founders’ links to slavery and the impact of the slave trade in Britain and the world.

”Ī professor of public history at the University of Manchester, Olusoga is also the author of seven books including Black and British: a Forgotten History, The World’s War, and A House Through Time.

“So having been lucky enough to made programmes that have similarly impacted other people’s lives and broadened their horizons is an astonishing privilege, far beyond anything I dreamed of when I first entered the industry in the late 1990s. It was watching David Attenborough that inspired me to go backpacking in my 20s to see the natural world. Olusoga said: “It was watching Michael Wood when I was a teenager that made me want to be a historian. He said his own experiences taught him that television – particularly factual TV – could change lives and broaden horizons.

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