"[1] After military service in Egypt, he studied History at New College, Oxford, where he dedicated much of his time to music and writing compositions for the theatre.
In 1954, he moved to London to study composition privately with William Lloyd Webber, Anthony Milner, Iain Hamilton, and Mátyás Seiber.
[3][4] In 1958, Wood composed his first published work: a set of variations for viola and piano showing the influence of Schoenberg and thematic references to Beethoven, which was premiered by Cecil Aronowitz.
[6] His music commands a broad communicative range: it can be violently expressionistic, poignantly lyrical, or even, as in the jazz inflected Piano Concerto, exuberantly rhythmic.
Wood liked to compose slowly and he typically preferred chamber music genres, though several of his large-scale works, such as his Symphony and Violin Concerto, are amongst his best known.