John Richard Taylor Wood, BA(Hons) (Rhodes), PhD (Edinburgh), FRHistS. Dr Richard Wood was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). He was educated at St George's College in Harare (then Salisbury), Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and Edinburgh University, Scotland. He was a Commonwealth scholar and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Research Fellow at the University of Rhodesia and a Professor of History at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa. This book, A Matter of Weeks Rather than Months: Sanctions and Abortive Settlements: 1965-1969, is the product of 37 years researching the history of Rhodesia. Given exclusive access to papers of the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, this is the third book in a series covering the post-Second World War story of Rhodesia. The other two volumes are The Welensky Papers: A History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953-1963 (1983) and So Far and No Further! Rhodesia's bid for independence during the retreat from Empire 1959-1965 (2005). He is at work on a third as yet untitled volume covering the period 1970-1980.
He is also a military historian, having served as a territorial soldier in the 1st and 8th Battalions, the Rhodesia Regiment, and in the Mapping and Research Unit of the Rhodesian Intelligence Corps. He has published The War Diaries of André Dennison (1989), numerous articles, conference papers and chapters in books, including in a forthcoming book on counter-insurgency.