After an MA in History from Oxford, and a Post HND (Distinction) from Bournemouth Film School, Justin has spent his career making award winning television history. 

 

Known for his innovative, genre defining work, one of his recent productions is a feature length, mixed current affairs/dramatised satire of Brexit politics for the BBC – Theresa v. Boris: How May Became PM.

 

As well as this, two of his most recent productions, both also affiliated with our Wicker Pictures, represent Justin's niche ability of crafting beautiful, cinematic stories through a lens of history and academia. One is a documentary film about his own familial reckoning with his late father's cult classic The Wicker Man, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The other is a tender, character driven folk horror fiction film, titled An Ill Wind, which utilises mythology and folk history to uncover hidden tragedies within a remote island. 

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For over twenty years, Justin has directed, written and produced over 20 TV and cinema films covering every century of the millennium; from 1066 through to the London Riots of 2011.  He won the first ever Royal Television Society Award for History, with The Great Plague in 2000.  He has won three more RTS awards, with Invitation to a Hanging, Trafalgar: Battle Surgeon and City of Vice.  He was nominated for a BAFTA for Relief of Belsen, and received a Primetime EMMY nomination for his Discovery Channel commission, Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real.  He also has experience in online history games.  His City of Vice game won a BAFTA as did the game production for 1066. 

 

In 2018, Justin embarked on a PhD at the University College London, alongside helping to launch a History video on demand channel - “a Netflix for history”, where he was a Curator  (responsible for drama commissions). In this capacity, he has just helped to launch the first ever historical drama podcast, a radio-play style podcast entitled A Prince in the Tower, starring Iain Glen (Game of Thrones), available now on HistoryHit.  

 

As part of his passionate commitment to promoting both history and film/TV studies, Justin has been a regular guest speaker on these subjects at both schools and universities across the United Kingdom. 

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Besides his recent film productions, Justin has also journeyed into the realm of academia and writing academic literature. After becoming a part-time lecturer at University College London, Justin began converting his PHD thesis into an academic book,  titled A New Genre for Television. The book released in May 2025, and Justin has another book titled Filmmaker as Historian, co-written with Professor Laurence Brockliss, slated for release later this year.