wood was born on 8 december 1916 in manchester; his father was then fighting in the first world war and his mother returned after the war to their family home in london, where wood was educated. he attended corpus christi college, cambridge, where he read classics and played rugby and judo. he joined the northern ireland ministry of home affairs in 1939 and was initially exempted from war service; his duties at the ministry related to organising emergency hospital planning. he then served with the royal naval volunteer reserve from 1942 to 1946, when he was demobilised and moved to the ministry of town and country planning. there, he was "one of the main architects of the town and country planning act (1947) ... one of the chief drafters of perhaps the most important piece of planning legislation in 20th-century britain". in preparation for this work, he travelled around britain to lecture planning officials on the act; he wrote "planning and the law" as a guidebook.