<p>This review starts by briefly outlining the history of the study of the response of wood first to impact and second to blast. Due to its importance in the construction of naval ships, wood was one of the first substances to have the velocity dependence of its resistance to terminal ballistic impact quantified. This was achieved in England and France early in the nineteenth century. Techniques for measuring the high-rate mechanical properties of wood were developed around the start of the twentieth century. These mostly involved drop-weight and pendulum machines to quantify the dynamic fracture toughness of timbers of commercial and military importance. These studies were mostly performed in the United States by the US Forest Service with peaks in activity during the two World Wars and again in the 1950s and 1960s due to fears of the bombardment of American cities by Soviet nuclear missiles. It was not until 1977 that the first high-rate compression stress–strain curves of wood were obtained using the Kolsky bar, despite this device having been developed in Britain during World War 2 and reported in the open literature in 1949. It took until the mid-1990s and the desire to use wood to cushion the drop-impact of vessels used to transport nuclear waste that Kolsky bar studies of wood began in earnest in Britain, the Czech Republic and Russia. Even so, to date fewer than 100 such studies have been published compared to nearly 5,000 for metals. This review outlines the effects of anisotropy, stress state, multiple repeat loading, moisture content, temperature, and density on the high-rate properties of a wide range of woods determined using the Kolsky bar. Also included are the very small number of 1D shock and Taylor impact studies that have been performed. The paper ends with suggestions for what needs doing in the future.</p>