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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 the startling array of ideas that fuelled his classic and gives it its lasting impact. One of the lasting appeals of Wells' 1887 classic is the very real topography of invasion and terror inflicted on South East England. Wells reduces suburban & central London to smoking rubbble, strewn with aero-forming red weed. You can map out exactly where the invasion begins at the sandpits on Horsell Common to its mucus ridden end at London's Primrose Hill.

2. 'A REMARKABLE STORY FROM WOKING'... So scream the headlines of the papers in a novel that revels in the rapidly changing social and media landscape of Victorian London. Francis Spufford wheels his bicycle along Maybury Road, where Wells lived at the time, to consider the delight which Wells took in destroying a place he had only just recently arrived at- Woking. The land of the dead, where the Necropolis railway deposited its cargo at Europe's largest cemetery. Wells would mount his new technological wonder, a tandem with his 'wife' in the front, and weave his way through the town and its Surrey environs noting down places and people before destroying them all in print! But who was Wells at this point in his life and who were we? What kind of world was Woking and beyond and what was it he was so intent on destroying? Joining Francis is science fiction chronicler Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck University) and historian Astrid Svenson (Brunel University).
Producer: Laura Thomas.