24 mins, 2004        [password required] Presenter Dave Nellist offers in clear and entertaining terms a range of possible causes of the industrial revolution. No final answers are given: it's up to the viewer to decide. A few great men? Maybe it was the genius of Britain's inventors, although that idea is not so popular now. Was it 'Geography', or was it in the mind, for example in the new ideas of individual freedom and enterprise, embodied in the non-conformist church? Another possibility is the effect of market forces: of consumer demand. Was that the fuse that lit the revolution? Was it even a revolution at all? We look at recent theories, arguing that perhaps it was more evolution than revolution, that the changes were less sudden and shocking than has been claimed.

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