His father was George Arnold Wood who taught history at the University of Sydney.
When he returned to Sydney, he privately tutored the later Nobel-laureate Patrick White.
[1] On 23 January 1932, he married a teacher, Joan Myrtle Walter, at Blackheath, New South Wales.
In 1935, a committee of the Victoria University College recommended that John Cawte Beaglehole chair their history department, but this was blocked for political reasons.
Wood spent the rest of his academic career at Victoria University of Wellington and was a contributor to the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45, writing a volume on political issues in New Zealand during the Second World War.