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Francis Spufford walks in the footsteps of Wells all conquering tripods from Woking to Primrose Hill in the company of writers, scientists & historians . Exploring along the way the startling array of ideas that fuelled his classic and continue to give it its lasting impact. At the height of Victorian 'awesomeness', Wells landed his Martians on Horsell Common & wiped the imperial grins off our ape like faces. Heat rays & black smoke reduced a mighty empire to panic and chaos in a matter of days. No less than we had done to the conquered of empire. His story was a brilliant fusion of the already established genre of invasion fiction & two decades of scientific speculation about Mars & Martians around the notion that the Red planet was inhabited. You can map out exactly where the invasion begins at the sandpits on Horsell Common to the doomed attempts to repulse the invaders on the banks of the Thames at Shepperton and finally to the Martians eerie end at their final staging post atop Primrose Hill.

Spufford begins his journey following H.G. Wells' Martian invaders at the Basingstoke Canal that runs through Woking. Here Wells canoed with his lover amidst the wild vegetation and dreamed about Mars, at the time widely believed to be criss crossed by vast canals created by an ancient and dying race. Wells wrote his book at the height of Martian Fever when the work of astronomers Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell had created intense speculation about life on Mars. But Wells' Martians are evolution's nightmare. We end on Horsell Common, sight of the first crashed Martian cylinder. First contact-Victorians style. Joining Francis Spufford are the science writer Oliver Morton (Mapping Mars) and the Historical Geographer Maria Lane (Geographies of Mars).

Producer: Mark Burman