David Olusoga's Biography

Who is David Olusoga?

David Olusoga was born in Lagos, Nigeria.

His father is Nigerian and his mother British. When they broke up, Olusoga, who refers to himself as 'a Geordie Nigerian', lived with his mother.

He gained a BA (Hons) in history from the University of Liverpool.

His television credits include The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers Of Empire (BBC Two), Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (BBC Two), for which he won a Bafta, and A Black History Of Britain (BBC Two).

He is the author of The World’s War, and the Colonial Roots of Nazism; and the co-author with Casper W Erichsen of The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide.

Much of his work revolves around military history, colonialism, slavery and scientific racism.

In August 2015, he stood in for Ndaba Mandela to deliver the Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Lecture.

In 2015, it was announced that David Olusoga was making two films in a new BBC Two series Civilisations, with Mary Beard and Simon Schama being the presenters of the other programmes in the series.

He wrote a book to accompany his four part BBC2 series Black & British: A Forgotten History, broadcast in November 2016.

In October 2017, it was announced that David Olusoga would present a four part series about a Georgian townhouse for BBC Two, entitled A House Through Time.

The series, based around 62 Falkner Street in Liverpool, was transmitted in January 2018.

In June 2019, the BBC announced it had commissioned a digital series Alt History, in which David Olusoga would address how and why the black experience is often left out of the narrative of British history.

In 2020, the BBC revealed that there would be a fourth series of A House Through Time, to be broadcast in 2021, this time with David Olusoga heading to Leeds.

In the same year David Olusoga gave the TV industry's keynote MacTaggart Lecture.

On 13 November 2020, the BBC announced that it had commissioned Barack Obama Talks To David Olusoga, a special programme in which President Obama discusses the first volume of his presidential memoirs, A Promised Land.

In 2023, the BBC again commissioned A House Through Time. This series featured two apartment blocks, one in London, the other in Berlin, over three decades, from the 1920s to the aftermath of World War Two.

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