Michael Hirst (born 21 September 1952) is an English screenwriter and producer, best known for his films Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), as well as the Emmy Award-winning television series The Tudors and Vikings. Hirst was born in Warsaw and grew up in Ilkley. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and attended the London School of Economics. He received a First Class Joint-Honours Degree in English and American Literature from the University of Nottingham and studied Henry James at Trinity College, Oxford. Hirst originally was going to be an academic, but decided to become a screenwriter after Nicolas Roeg read one of his short stories and asked Hirst to write screenplays for him. Hirst was head writer, creator and executive producer of the Showtime television Drama Series The Tudors which aired from 2007 to 2010. It tells the story of King Henry VIII and his Six Wives as well as his court and the dilemmas throughout his kingdom during his reign. Hirst is one of the co-writers on the screenplay for the James Dalessandro book, 1906. The story follows a young man who discovers a series of secrets and lies that left San Francisco highly vulnerable to the fires that engulfed it in the aftermath of the historical 1906 earthquake, released in 2012. In 2011, he co-produced the series Camelot with Chris Chibnall for Starz. Hirst then produced The Borgias television series for Showtime, telling the story of the notorious Borgia family. The filming began in the summer of 2010 and the series ran for three seasons. In 2013 Hirst created Vikings which was The History Channel's first foray into serialised drama.