Neil Oliver


Neil Oliver is a Scottish television presenter, freelance archaeologist, conservationist, and author. He is best known as a presenter of several BBC historical and archaeological documentary series, including A History of Scotland, Vikings, and Coast. In 2017, he was appointed president of the National Trust for Scotland.

Early life and education

Oliver was born in Renfrewshire and grew up in Ayr and Dumfries where he attended Dumfries Academy. He then attended the University of Glasgow. He obtained an MA and then worked as a freelance archaeologist, before training as a journalist.

Filmography

Oliver's television debut came in 2002 with BBC Two's Two Men in a Trench, which featured Oliver and close friend, Tony Pollard, visiting historic British battlefields and recreating the battle situations using state of the art archaeological techniques. In addition to the TV series, Oliver co-wrote the two accompanying books.
In 2005, he wrote a tie-in book for the Channel 4 documentary, Not Forgotten, which was presented by Ian Hislop. Oliver then became the archaeological and social history expert on Coast and in the next series he replaced Nicholas Crane as the show's main presenter and remained as such for the third and fourth series.
In 2006, Oliver appeared in two more documentary series, Channel 4's The Face of Britain and BBC Two's Scotland's History: The Top Ten. In August 2006, he also appeared on the special "Big Royal Dig" edition of Channel 4's Time Team, in which he presented a dig at Holyrood Palace.
Oliver was a contributor to BBC One's The One Show in the summer of 2007. He also appeared that year as one of the presenters of BBC Two series The History Detectives.
Oliver's series A History of Scotland began airing on 9 November 2008 on BBC One Scotland and was broadcast throughout the UK in 2009. The series also has links to radio, online and Open University materials. Like Coast, the programme is a co-production of the BBC and the Open University.
On 23 March 2009, Neil Oliver presented a programme on Cleopatra on BBC One.
In February 2011, he presented A History of Ancient Britain on BBC Two. This was followed later in the year by A History of Celtic Britain. He also provided the voice-over for VisitScotland's 2011 television advertisement. Oliver also hosted The Last Explorers, a four-episode series retracing the expeditions of four Scottish explorers who planted ideas rather than flags, that screened on BBC for four weeks from 24 November 2011.
Oliver presented the three-part series Vikings 11 September 2012 – 25 September 2012.
Oliver presented the three-part series Sacred Wonders of Britain for BBC Two and Coast Australia, aired in 2013–14.
In 2015, he presented Britain's Deadliest Rail Disaster: Quintinshill about the Quintinshill rail disaster, which took place in 1915.
In 2015, he co-presented a 3-part BBC TV documentary with Alice Roberts, entitled The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice, and the following year continued his Coast series with Coast New Zealand.
Neil Oliver also presented a BBC documentary called Scotland and the Klan, highlighting the Scottish foundations of the Ku Klux Klan, originally aired in October 2016.
In December 2016, Oliver was involved in episode 2 of the Celebrity Series of Robot Wars, helping create a robot called "Soldier ANT",. It won one game, but lost the other two on knockout and was eliminated.
In 2017, Neil Oliver co-presented BBC 4's 3-part history series Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney. The other presenters were Chris Packham, Andy Torbet, and Shini Somara.
In December 2018, he presented BBC4's 3 part docu-drama series Rise of the Clans.

Personal life

He lives in Stirling with his wife Trudi and their three children. He is a patron of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers.
In November 2011, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Abertay Dundee.

Politics

In May 2014, Oliver stated in an interview with The Herald, that he was "proud of Britain" and noted his dislike of the forthcoming Scottish independence referendum saying that he found "this kind of internecine squabbling puts my teeth on edge. I would rather that it would just go away – or that it had never happened". He went on to say that he "liked the status quo". When he was appointed President of the National Trust for Scotland, thousands signed petitions calling on him to resign.
In June 2020, in the midst of a row about his admiration for the historian David Starkey, Neil Oliver announced he was resigning from the National Trust for Scotland board. However, Oliver pointed out that he was 'stepping down “as intended” when his three year term in the role comes to an end in September .'

Publications