Warwick to Radley

Michael Portillo embarks on a journey through Edwardian Britain, steered by his early twentieth century Bradshaw’s Guide. In Warwick’s medieval castle he uncovers the scene of an extravagant and scandalous ball, which changed the life of its hostess, Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick.

At Cowley, Michael marvels at a spectacularly automated state-of-the-art production line producing 1,000 Minis a day and probes the pre-First World War origins of the Morris Oxford. He is delighted to find that cars for export are loaded in Italian Job style on to trains at the factory’s own railhead.

In Oxford, Michael finds how medieval pottery at the Ashmolean Museum inspired TE Lawrence to pursue archaeology in the Middle East, where he was co-opted into British intelligence and helped to mastermind the famous attacks on the Hejaz Railway. And at Radley, Michael hears a song setting by composer George Butterworth, who taught music at Radley College before he and many former pupils were killed in the First World War.