"NARRATOR:" "When a man called Robinson was released from Edgcote open prison, he made his way to the nearest city and looked for somewhere to haunt." "The house had once been a hotel and was not far from the river." "For a few weeks, he dared go no further than the city's outskirts." "He believed that he could communicate with a network of non-human intelligences that had sought refuge in marginal and hidden locations." "They were determined to preserve the possibility of life's survival on the planet and enlisted him to work on their behalf." "In the library, he photocopied Jameson's anticipation of the crisis." "'It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing 'deterioration of the earth and of nature 'than the breakdown of late capitalism." "'Perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.'" "He was equipped with an ancient cine camera, with which he made images of his everyday surroundings." "In the middle of March, the banking crisis intensified, with the failure of an £11 billion Carlyle hedge fund and the near collapse of Bear Stearns, the United States' fifth largest bank." "From a nearby car park, he surveyed the centre of the island on which he was shipwrecked." "'The location,' he wrote, 'of a Great Malady 'that I shall dispel in the manner of Turner, 'by making picturesque views 'on journeys to sites of scientific and historic interest.'" "He had read that one of the factors that enabled industrial capitalism to develop first in England was the mobility of the previously settled agricultural workforce." "Such labour market flexibility, however, derived not from any Anglo-Saxon customary freedoms but from government legislation, an act to prevent the removal of poor persons until they shall actually become chargeable, the 1795 amendment to the Settlement Act:" "'in the interest of freeing hands 'to go where burgeoning capitalist enterprise needed them most'." "That same year, a meteorite fell in Yorkshire, which confirmed the reality of meteorites and led Robinson to conclude that a meteorite fall necessarily coincides with an event of major historical significance." "He was reading Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, published in 1944, which locates the origin of 20th century catastrophe in the development of market society in England." "Polanyi accorded great significance to the system of poor relief devised by the Berkshire magistrates on May 6th, 1795, at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, a part of Newbury." "The system guaranteed a minimum income linked to the price of bread, which had risen steeply." "It offered landless agricultural workers some protection from the displacement intended by the changes to the Settlement Act." "Polanyi argued that laissez-faire was planned, whereas Speenhamland was society's spontaneous reaction to the disasters that were accompanying its imposition." "'The idea of a self-adjusting market,' he wrote, 'implied a stark utopia." "'Such an institution could not exist for any length of time 'without annihilating the human and natural substance of society.'" "In the city's high street, the Shelley Memorial stood on the former site of Cross Hall, where Boyle and Hooke performed experiments with an air pump that confirmed the first part of the theory of gases and hence led later to the precursors of the modern steam engine." "Shelley was expelled from the university in 1811, after publishing a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism." "In 1819, on receiving news in Italy of the massacre at St Peter's Field in Manchester on August 16th, he wrote The Mask of Anarchy, from which Robinson recalled," "'All things have a home but one, thou, oh Englishman hast none!" "'" "Of course, Robinson wasn't his real name and he wasn't English." "He had arrived in London in 1966 from Berlin, before which his history was uncertain, having been attracted by the period's popular culture and the presence of so many prehistoric structures in the landscape." "My late beloved had once been Robinson's co-researcher, accompanying him on a series of projects during the 1990s, the last of which had led to Robinson's imprisonment." "I had heard that he had been released, but did not know how to contact him or where he'd gone." "Robinson had once said he believed that if he looked at the landscape hard enough, it would reveal to him the molecular basis of historical events and in this way, he hoped to see into the future." "He visited the nearest standing stone in the hope it might offer a materialist inspiration resembling experience of the sacred, which it did, though it turned out that the stone was not an ancient monument but had once been a footbridge across a little stream, now dry." "In the previous few months, the prices of wheat and other commodities, including oil, had risen sharply, driven by both speculation and increased international demand." "A footpath, once a Roman road, led him to the gasometer and to a recently opened supermarket next to the surviving fragment of what had once been the Morris motorworks where the Mini was first produced in 1959." "Lidl had been granted planning permission only after an appeal to central government heard at a public inquiry." "With 7,500 stores in 24 countries," "Lidl had been criticised repeatedly for mistreating its employees." "On the previous day, Stern had revealed that the company had used hidden cameras to spy on its workers in a manner reminiscent of the Stasi." "The sculpture, Together, by a local artist, was dedicated to the community of the neighbouring suburb, which the company's case study had identified as an under-served market with high levels of unemployment, child poverty and sickness" "and 33% of households lacking access to a car." "In 2002, it had been the first ward in the UK to elect members of the Independent Working Class Association, who wrote that 'as the state gradually withdraws 'from areas of social responsibility, 'rather than condemn their desertion and plead for them to come back," "'the IWCA will seek to fill the void, both socially and politically'." "Despite his increasing insubstantiality," "Robinson had returned from Lidl with two bottles of Putinoff vodka, a snow shovel and several own-brand items in illustrated packaging that recalled the dwelling of Black Forest farmers which, for Heidegger, 'let earth and heaven, divinities and mortals" "'enter in simple oneness into things.'" "For which simple oneness, Robinson began to search by visiting a well." "In the Long Leys, an old road leading westward to a former ferry crossing of the Thames, he came to a gap in the blackthorn bushes." "Here was the famous Physic Well, which evidently still attracted visitors." "An antiquary, Anthony Wood, wrote in 1667 that it was much resorted to by scholars." "At the former site of another spring, a drinking fountain was installed in 1885." "On April 6th, it snowed, which recalled to him the purpose of his undertaking." "In Marx's doctoral thesis," "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, he found Epicure's theory of meteors, which he understood as a reference to the weather." "The next day, 10 leading climate scientists published a paper warning that then-current CO2 targets were too high for humanity to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed, and would lead instead to irreversible disaster." "On April 8th, he photographed the substation through which the neighbourhood was supplied with electricity." "He had acquired various clockwork and solar-powered devices so as to be able to communicate without the need for even occasional connection to the national grid." "The good news, said the scientists, was that reserves of fossil fuels had been exaggerated so that alternative energy sources would be more rapidly developed." "Though, in the UK, he thought the suggestion might be over-optimistic." "On April 9th, the IMF warned that the US banking crisis was the 'largest financial shock since the Great Depression' and that the UK's economy was especially vulnerable." "On April 10th, he set out for Harrowdown Hill, where Dr David Kelly," "Ministry of Defence specialist on biological warfare, a former UN weapons inspector, had been found dead the morning after he'd gone out for a walk on July 17th, 2003." "From Harrowdown Hill, it was not far to RAF Brize Norton, the point of departure and arrival for military transports to and from Iraq and Afghanistan." "It was the Royal Air Force's largest station and the main UK base for strategic air transport and air-to-air refuelling." "Until April 2007, the bodies of UK service personnel killed in action had been repatriated to Brize Norton and inquests were still heard by the Oxfordshire coroner." "The next morning, after a night spent in the enclosure of a mobile telephone mast, he photographed the first of several agricultural subjects." "'Oilseed rape,' he wrote, 'is a plant of the genus Brassica." "'The name "rape" derives from the Latin for turnip 'and was first recorded in English at the end of the 14th century, 'when the plant was a source of lamp oil." "'Rapeseed oil was produced in the 19th century 'as a lubricant for steam engines." "'In 2007, the UK's production first exceeded two million tonnes, '11% more than consumption for domestic uses, 'which, as well as cooking oil, include margarine, cattle feed, 'candles, soaps, plastics, polymers and lubricants." "'The main export trade is to Germany for biodiesel.'" "At the time, rapeseed oil was the preferred oil stock for biodiesel production in most of Europe." "Beside the A40, he encountered what turned out to be a marker indicating the presence of an underground pipeline." "Southern Gas Networks was then one of eight regional gas distribution companies in the UK formed after the network in the south of England was acquired from National Grid Transco by a consortium made up of Scottish and Southern Energy," "the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan with assets of around 85 billion Canadian dollars, and Borealis Infrastructure Management, which managed around 36 billion Canadian dollars' worth of assets to provide retirement benefits to 355,000 members on behalf of 900 local government employers across Canada." "On April 20th, he walked to Launton, near Bicester, in search of the site where a meteorite fell on February 15th, 1830." "1830 was a year of revolutions in France and Belgium and in England, where the Captain Swing Riots began at the end of August and continued through the autumn." "On September 15th, the Liverpool to Manchester railway was inaugurated." "The monument was halfway up Poundon Hill, the site of a former diplomatic wireless service transmitter used by the Special Operations Executive during World War II." "But it was not meant to commemorate the meteorite." "It was a Millennium Milepost on a cycle route to Cambridge, one of a thousand funded by the Royal Bank of Scotland." "RBS was the world's largest bank." "In the previous day's paper, he had read about its weak capital position." "It was then the most vulnerable major bank in Europe." "He was not far from Otmoor, where another revolution began in 1830, as he found out later." "Launton was once a stop on the Oxford-to-Cambridge railway." "In 2008, a section of the line was still used for military freight and by trains that carried refuse to landfill in old clay pits in Buckinghamshire." "He'd returned to the city by following the River Cherwell, or 'Charwell', as the name is still pronounced there." "He discovered that Frederick Lindemann, who became the first, and so far only, Viscount Cherwell, was Churchill's scientific advisor during World War II." "In 1942, Lindemann delivered the 'dehousing paper', which advocated area bombardment of German cities." "In 1954, he was the leading figure in setting up the UK Atomic Energy Authority, incorporating the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, the site of Europe's first nuclear reactor, and the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston," "later the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which produced the warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons." "A few years after Robinson's disappearance in the 1990s, my future lover had published a report based on their work that had led to his becoming a government advisor." "I met him at a conference about documentary film in China." "We set up a small research team with the aim of developing novel definitions of economic well-being based on the transformative potential we attributed to images of landscape." "Robinson understood the leafy Xanthoria to be an indication he should visit Newbury, but he couldn't think what else it might be suggesting." "The lichen flourishes in places exposed to nitrogen pollutants and is often found near busy roads." "To begin with, he thought the profile might be that of Goethe, or perhaps one of the Berkshire magistrates." "He set out to walk to the Pelican Inn, intending to arrive on May 6th, the anniversary of their meeting." "He hadn't gone very far when he met some primroses next to a lay-by where, he guessed, they had been seeded by the Highways Agency." "He had read that the UK's temperature range was moving northwards by about four kilometres every year." "Primrose plants can live for over 50 years." "Their seeds rely mostly on ants for transport unless blown further by the traffic." "By mid-afternoon, he had reached the Downs, which offered a view north to Harwell, where the nuclear research facilities were being decommissioned and the Diamond synchrotron was the UK's largest scientific investment for 30 years." "The next day was May Day, and he decided to spend a few days in the vicinity of the Ridgeway." "Until the 18th century, the Ridgeway was a wide expanse of many smaller tracks." "The path was located in the year of parliamentary enclosure, to keep livestock out of newly cultivated fields." "On May 6th, he reached Donnington Castle on the outskirts of Newbury, near what was once the scene of some of the largest anti-road protests in European history." "In the civil war, the castle was taken for the King after the First Battle of Newbury, then besieged and bombarded for 18 months by parliamentary forces." "The ruin was placed in the care of the state in 1946." "While the civil war, he read, 'did not create a capitalist society 'where none had existed before', it was 'a milestone 'in the evolution of property relations and the state in England.'" "The horse-chestnut tree was introduced to Northern Europe from Turkey in the late 16th century." "During the First World War, horse-chestnuts were used to make acetone, a process invented by Chaim Weizmann, which is said to have influenced Balfour to declare British support for Jewish settlement of Palestine." "The Pelican Inn, the George and Pelican, as it was in 1795, was a large coaching inn on the road from London to Bristol, later a bank." "There was no sign of its having been the site of any historic decision." "Speenhamland was denounced by market liberals and others, including Edmund Burke, who in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity wrote that it broke 'the laws of commerce which are the laws of nature, 'and consequently, the laws of God'." "Robinson walked on until he came to Greenham Common, where public access had been restored eight years before." "The last cruise missiles in Europe had been removed in March 1991 under the terms of the 1987 INF Treaty." "There had been 96 Griffin ground-launched missiles with nuclear warheads at the base." "Greenham was the first US Air Force base in Europe where cruise missiles had been sited." "The UK government had announced NATO's decision in June 1980." "The Women's Peace Camp began in September of the following year." "In 1988, the Peace Camp had established that since the base's presence infringed commoners' rights, it must have always been illegal." "The Common had been requisitioned in 1941 for an airfield, a satellite to RAF Aldermaston." "In March 1997, it was bought by the Greenham Common Trust, a charity set up to manage the base's return to civil use." "The open land was acquired for £1 by Newbury District Council, which began the Common's restoration and reopened it to public access." "The US Air Force had handed the base back to the RAF in 1992, dismantling or abandoning facilities on which it had only recently spent $250 million." "Between 1958 and 1964, US Air Force long-range bombers had been on standby for immediate take-off with nuclear weapons." "The runway was then the longest anywhere in Europe." "For many who opposed their installation, the cruise missiles at Greenham had implied that if deterrents failed, the United States could have fought a nuclear war in Europe while preserving its own territory intact." "The Common was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1985." "In 1941, part of the Aldermaston Court estate was requisitioned for an RAF bomber operations training unit." "In September 1949, the airfield was chosen as the site for the future Atomic Weapons Research Establishment." "Robinson was afraid to go any nearer, not wishing to encounter Ministry of Defence police." "Instead, he went to the hotel, and a few days later, to the ruins of the Roman town at Silchester." "From Silchester, it was not very far to West Green House, which was sometimes open to the public." "He had wanted to see the inscription 'Fay ce que vouldras.'" "'Do what you will,' the single rule of Rabelais' ideal community, the Abbey of Thélème." "The rule was borrowed from a homily of St Augustine of Hippo," "'Love, and do what you will'." "In the 18th century, Rabelais' words were adopted as the motto of the Hell-Fire Club and in the 20th, by Aleister Crowley." "The house was rebuilt in the 18th century by Henry 'Hangman' Hawley, who commanded the cavalry at Culloden." "In the 1980s, it had been let to Alistair Lord McAlpine, treasurer and deputy chairman of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party." "Robinson was saddened by these appropriations of Rabelais' ideal community, which he understood to be based on the belief that 'people ... have naturally an instinct and spur 'that prompteth them unto virtuous actions'." "He hung about the neighbourhood for several days, begging in the woods, until eventually, he was sufficiently encouraged to return to Aldermaston." "In 1993, the Atomic Weapons Establishment became a Government Owned, Contractor Operated or GO-CO institution." "Since 2000, it had been operated by a joint venture of three equal partners, the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels Limited," "Serco, a UK private sector company with roles in many challenging areas of the public sector, and the US aerospace company Lockheed Martin." "The government later sold its BNFL share to the Jacobs Engineering Group, a US company, so that the UK's nuclear weapons production was in two-thirds US ownership." "A few months later, it was reported that the AWE was undertaking work for the US military, both these circumstances being arguably in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids the sharing of nuclear weapons technology by independent states." "A bylaw banning camping was overturned by judges ruling on an appeal by the Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp in February the following year." "He was not far from Crookham House, where the Riot Act was read to machine breakers on November 17th, 1830." "At Speen, on the 20th, the vestry agreed an increase in workers' wages." "The Swing Riots in Berkshire had begun at Thatcham five days earlier." "At Padworth Common, near Aldermaston, he found another strategic asset, one of the largest depots of the Government Pipeline and Storage System, which supplied aviation and other fuels to US and UK military bases and the UK's civil airports." "The GPSS was initiated in 1942." "It interconnected with the oil companies' networks and its civil use produced revenue for the Ministry of Defence." "The agreement to supply US bases had been renewed most recently in 2004." "The depot was managed by a joint venture of Serco and Gulf Engineering and Babcock International." "One of the main pipelines led north." "A few weeks before, Boris Johnson had won the London mayoral election and resigned as an MP." "As a result, there'd been a by-election in South Oxfordshire, where several large farms had contracts to grow opium so as to achieve national self-sufficiency in the production of medicinal diamorphine." "It was still NATO policy to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan, where another record harvest was predicted, threatening a glut of heroin on the UK's streets." "As a cinematographer, Robinson was interested in opium." "He often quoted Walter Benjamin." "'The true creative overcoming of religious illumination 'certainly does not lie in narcotics." "'It resides in a profane illumination.'" "The GPSS comprises about 2,500 kilometres of pipeline and 46 depots, 11 of which are still in use." "It moves about five billion litres of fuel every year." "The pipeline led him along Icknield Way towards Tetsworth, a village from which it continued northeastwards towards east coast oil terminals and US Air Force bases in East Anglia." "On June 25th, the Federation of American Scientists had reported that during the previous few years, the last 110 US nuclear weapons in the UK had been withdrawn from RAF Lakenheath." "A spokesman for the Los Alamos Study Group had commented that 'the nuclear weapons themselves 'don't serve any military purpose." "'They are mostly about cementing a political bond 'that ties Europe to US interests.'" "When he reached Tetsworth near the St Michael's ley line, there was a depot beside a road that ran under the M40 motorway, from which a branch of the main pipeline ran northwest to the former US base at Upper Heyford." "At Junction 6 of the motorway, there was a fast-expanding colony of pyramidal orchids on the verges of the slip roads." "He was encouraged by this success at such a seemingly inhospitable location." "On the Ridgeway, which crossed the motorway near the junction, he found the disused quarry of a cement works, mistaking it at first sight for a meteorite crater." "He inquired about the possibility of redevelopment, but there was already a proposal to build eco homes on six of the 72 hectares, with the rest retained for wildlife." "The quarry had been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1986." "He had once heard a well-known physicist suggest that in the long run, human survival would depend on the settlement of other planets." "The remains of the Rocket Propulsion Establishment were about 12 miles away, at what was then the Westcott Venture Park, previously RAF Westcott, where rocket research began in 1946." "During the 1950s, several structures had been built to test the RZ2 rocket motor for Blue Streak, the UK's intermediate-range ballistic missile." "The rocket industry was still active at the site." "European Astrotech and AMPAC In-Space Propulsion operated various facilities, the latter a US manufacturer of propulsion systems for missile defence, launch vehicles and satellites, whose engines had powered several interplanetary missions." "Blue Streak was cancelled in 1960, ending the UK's independent development of strategic nuclear weapons." "The Mutual Defence Agreement had been signed in 1958." "In 1963, the UK signed the agreement for Polaris, committing the weapons, in principle, to NATO, while in the same year its attempt to join the European Economic Community was rejected." "It was the beginning of July." "The price of Brent crude had reached $146 a barrel, the G8 was about to meet in Japan and the heads of the UK's banks had assured the Chancellor that the worst of the credit crisis was over." "He had now almost completely circumnavigated his starting point." "On what had once been the coach road from London to Aberystwyth, he crossed the Roman road that had led him three months earlier to the car factory where production of the Mini was not yet diminished, despite a collapse in car sales" "that was bringing US manufacturers to the brink of failure." "In BMW's ownership, the surviving fragment of the last UK-owned volume car manufacturer had become very successful." "By 2008, production had reached 240,000 cars a year, almost 700 a day, 80% of them exported." "With the financial sector's disgrace, the government had rediscovered the importance of manufacturing industry and exports." "The Prime Minister had visited and images of BMW's production line were common in reports of UK manufacturing's brief revival." "He often saw road deliveries as they left the factory." "Cars for export, on the other hand, were carried by rail, to be shipped from Purfleet in Essex." "In the 1960s, the car industry had been sacrificed for the US-UK relationship." "Outside the European community, it had proved impossible to export the world-leading designs of Alec Issigonis to a market large enough to finance long-overdue investment." "As a surrealist, Robinson believed that designers of artefacts should seek to emulate the morphogenesis of life forms and pursued this and similar questions in encounters with flowers." "He inclined to biophilia, the love of life and living systems, having discovered Lynn Margulis' view that symbiotic relationships between organisms, often of different phyla, are a primary force in evolution." "He was inspired by her endorsement of the Russian botanists, who had formulated the theory in the 1920s, and by her denunciation of Neo-Darwinism and all 'capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit' interpretations of Darwin." "While Robinson had been away, a builder had been contracted to begin the house's reconstruction so he set out to look for another ruined dwelling." "A few miles north, he found another marker for the government pipeline, a branch built to supply RAF Upper Heyford from where, in 1986, the US Air Force had sent F-111s to attack Libya." "The pipeline ran parallel to the old coach road." "He was interested in the coach road." "He sensed that it might lead him to an important destination, and decided to spend the rest of July in its vicinity." "On the 11th, the price of Brent crude peaked at just over $147 a barrel after Iran had test-fired nine ballistic missiles." "In the journal Nature, it was argued that rates of species extinction had been seriously underestimated." "Four years earlier, a 40-year study of plants, birds and, in particular, butterflies in Britain had given a firm indication of approaching mass extinction." "There were several anticipated scenarios." "In one, within two or 300 years, human activity would lead to ecological collapse, after which the biosphere would endure a period of shock, from which it would then slowly recover." "In another, irreversible heating would lead to the evaporation of the oceans and the end of life on Earth." "At the next village, Islip, there was a fuel depot alongside the station." "The US Air Force had left Upper Heyford in 1994 and the depot didn't seem to be in use, though it was maintained, perhaps in case of some anticipated emergency." "The sign on the gate said, 'Amalgamated Construction.'" "Amco was a UK-based group which provided 'design, project management and construction services' to the rail, energy, engineering and materials-handling markets." "By the end of the month, the price of oil had dropped below $125 a barrel." "In the previous six months, the price of arable land had risen by 32% to nearly £14,500 a hectare, after increases in prices of agricultural commodities." "The price of wheat had doubled in the year to March." "There had been bread riots in Egypt and several other countries." "In the UK, there were 2.1 million hectares of wheat, a 14% increase on the previous year." "Sample yields gave early indications of a record harvest." "At the beginning of August, the contractor began work at the house." "There were several days with frequent showers of heavy rain." "On the 11th, Robinson set off again into the country to make pictures of the harvest." "He found a field with a view of the city's largest hospital and wondered if he might devise a more ambitious way to commemorate the National Health Service's 60th anniversary." "The camera recorded images on photographic film, which he had judged would be more durable in the long run than any digital medium." "Though cultivated in Britain for over 3,000 years, field beans were grown in the UK mainly for animal feed." "Field beans for human consumption were exported, mostly to Egypt, to be used in a variety of dishes, especially during Ramadan." "Wheat has been domesticated for at least 10,000 years." "It is the UK's predominant crop, one of the world's three major staples." "In an average year, the UK grew about 50 million tonnes of wheat, of which about 25% was exported." "About 40% of the crop was used as animal feed, much of it for cattle." "Only the best wheat could be sold at a higher price, for milling." "Milling wheat was typically about a third of the total harvest." "Despite record yields, with a falling price and steep increases in the costs of fertiliser and fuel, farmers would find it difficult to make much profit from their wheat unless they could sell the grain for milling." "The better prepared had pre-sold part of their crop already, when prices were higher, earlier in the year." "If the wheat were harvested when damp, drying would add 15% to the cost of its production and less would be sold as suitable for milling." "In the middle of August, farmers began to cut their crops, despite there being no sign of any prolonged improvement in the weather." "At the end of August, the harvest was still only about half complete." "In some parts of the country, it continued until the end of September." "Without the trees, the house would soon be more visible than it had been for several decades." "He was puzzled by the role of neo-Gothic in the United Kingdom, having previously understood it as symptomatic of laissez-faire and structural weakness since the 17th century." "It seemed strange that so much effort should be devoted to its preservation." "One evening, he revisited Xanthoria parietina." "A lichen is a symbiotic hybrid of a fungus and a green alga or photosynthesising bacterium, sometimes all three." "Lichens are examples of mutualism, in which all the partners benefit from their association." "They are the dominant life form on about 8% of the Earth's land surface." "Many live in extreme environments." "Some lichens are believed to be about 5,000 years old and among the oldest living things on Earth." "At 10:30 on Wednesday, September 10th, a first beam of protons was sent clockwise round the 27-kilometre long circuit of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on the outskirts of Geneva." "The project for the house's reconstruction did not seem to have been affected by the slump in property, which had by then spread from the US and the UK to Continental Europe and Japan." "In New York, at least three major banks were known to be at risk of failure." "A few days earlier, the two largest US mortgage finance corporations, with $5 trillion worth of loans, had been taken into public ownership to save them from collapse." "In the early hours of Monday, September 15th, after a weekend of frantic negotiations between US and UK bankers and the Federal Reserve," "Lehman Brothers announced that it would file for bankruptcy." "A few hours earlier," "Merrill Lynch had agreed to be taken over by Bank of America for only $50 billion." "On Monday morning, stock markets began falling." "By 9:00 a.m. in London, the share price of HBOS, the UK's biggest mortgage lender, had fallen by 34%." "A spokesman for the company stressed that 'HBOS is a strong financial institution'." "During the afternoon, at a White House press briefing, the US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson assured the public they could remain confident in the 'soundness and resilience' of the financial system." "By the end of Monday's trading, oil prices had dropped by more than $5 a barrel, wheat futures were up 3.2% and gold had risen by more than $28 an ounce." "On Monday evening, the US authorities agreed a $20 billion emergency loan to the insurer AIG, after its share price had fallen by 63% during the day." "On Tuesday, markets in Asia that had been closed on Monday fell rapidly in early trading." "In London, HBOS' share price continued falling." "The spokesman claimed the bank was 'strong and well-capitalised' and there were calls for government intervention, to stop hedge funds from short-selling the bank's shares." "In New York, when the markets opened, AIG's share price fell again by 30%." "Late that night, the US government agreed to give AIG $85 billion in return for a 79.9% stake in the company." "On Wednesday morning in London, HBOS began merger talks with Lloyds TSB." "In Moscow, the government regulators suspended trading on the two main stock exchanges." "The Bank of England announced it would extend its emergency lending scheme for UK banks." "In New York, gold closed up $70, one of the largest one-day increases on record." "At 7:00 on Thursday morning," "Lloyds' takeover of HBOS was announced to the City, shares continued to fall and gold rose another $30." "Six of the world's largest central banks together offered $180 billion to overcome the scarcity of funds in short-term dollar markets." "On Friday, the world's stock markets stopped falling." "Governments' intervention had averted the financial system's immediate collapse." "But the US and UK economies' deteriorating performance was reported daily." "While the turbulence had subsided, it seemed likely there would soon be more." "The state having intervened on such an unprecedented scale, it seemed possible for a moment to imagine this was no ordinary crisis and that some larger historic shift might be occurring." "As Robinson resumed his search, he felt certain he was en route to what would prove to be a valuable discovery." "There was a view to the northwest of another quarry." "And a few miles further on, a distant chimney, which suggested the likelihood of romantic ruins." "At Beckley, one of the 'seven towns of Otmoor', he photographed the broadcasting transmitter he'd already seen from several more distant locations." "Further on the road passed near to Otmoor, the landscape of Through the Looking-Glass." "Otmoor was a wetland common, where the inhabitants of the 'seven towns' were accustomed to graze cattle, sheep and geese." "When landlords had secured legislation for the moor's enclosure, the River Ray was rerouted and began to flood neighbouring farms." "In June 1830, farmers affected broke the new channel's embankment." "Twenty-nine were charged with felony but were acquitted after pleading they had acted 'to relieve themselves of the inconvenience 'of having their lands overflowed by what the Commissioners had done'." "The acquittals encouraged a belief that the enclosure lacked a legal basis." "On Monday, September 6th, about a thousand people walked the circumference of the moor, 'possessioning' it in accordance with the local custom and destroyed every fence and hedge that they encountered." "Yeomanry arrived and a Mr Henley read the Riot Act." "But the crowd did not disperse." "Of 66 arrested, 44 were sent with an armed escort of yeomanry to be detained in Oxford Jail." "In the city at the annual St Giles' Fair, a huge crowd was sympathetic to the protest." "When the convoy arrived, the crowd attacked and the prisoners were rescued." "The resistance then acquired a pattern." "On moonlit nights, large crowds would go out;" "with blackened faces, some of the men disguised as women, armed with pitchforks, billhooks and guns, they would pull down the enclosures that had been put up during the day." "Troops failed to prevent the action from continuing." "Between 1832 and 1835, a force of metropolitan constables policed the moor at a cost of 13% of the county's expenditure." "There was anger that the public should protect a private property speculation." "In time, the alliance of the property-owning farmers with their poorer neighbours weakened, and the fence-breaking subsided." "The enclosure itself was largely unsuccessful." "Weston Otmoor was a proposal for an eco town of 15,000 dwellings alongside the M40." "This site would have included RAF Weston-on-the-Green, the drop zone for the RAF parachute training school, and Skydive Weston, a centre for civilian skydiving." "On September 29th, the contractors began work on the inside of the house and there was another outbreak of financial sector panic." "The US House of Representatives blocked its government's" "$700 billion bailout of the banks." "Stock markets crashed again." "And in both Europe and the United States, banks had to be taken over or nationalised." "In the suburbs, Robinson had found another empty house and what he took to be a sign of hospitality to pilgrims." "His only source of income was from savings." "So, he was anxious to find out what was happening to the banks." "On Friday, October 3rd, at the second attempt, the House of Representatives agreed the $700 billion rescue." "Around the world governments made huge amounts of credit available to the money markets." "But the fear of further bank failures continued so that credit was still very difficult to come by." "Savers withdrew their cash from what now appeared risky institutions and took it to the Post Office and the Cooperative Bank." "In the United States, the bailout had faced strident opposition." "'During the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution,' said a Representative from Michigan, 'the slogan was "Peace, Land and Bread"." "'Today, you're being asked to choose between bread and freedom.'" "Despite the rain, the wheat harvest was a record." "17.2 million tonnes, but only 28% of this was used for making flour." "Of the arable crops he'd encountered, apart from opium, it appeared that none would be destined primarily for human consumption." "On October 8th, he left the road and set out in the direction of the ruined factory, but came instead to Hampton Gay, which he recognised as a deserted village." "The church had been rebuilt in five years after 1767." "There were traces of an earlier pattern of agriculture in the fields." "A notice stated that 'late in the reign of Elizabeth I, 'enclosure of the land by "new gentry" proved disastrous for the inhabitants, 'who banded together in 1596' in an abortive rising." "There had been three poor harvests and by autumn, the price of grain had doubled since the beginning of the year." "The village's landlord was Vincent Barry." "His grandfather John had bought the manor for £1,100 in 1544." "A former glover, he had become rich grazing sheep on land acquired after the dissolution of the monasteries." "By 1596, the Barrys had enclosed much of the manor and built the manor house." "It was gutted by a fire in 1887." "Bartholomew Steer was a 28-year-old carpenter who had worked for Barry and lived in the village." "Since early September, with a few companions, he had travelled to nearby villages and towns preaching the politics of Cockayne." "'Work?" "Care not for worke, for we shall have a meryer world shortly." "'There would be a rising of the people to pulle downe the enclosures'." "They 'needed not to work, nor take anie care for Corne this deere yeare', for they would 'pull the corne out of the Riche men's barnes'." "They planned an armed progress through the county, 'knocking down gentlemen'." "At Vincent Barry's, they would 'spoill him and Cutt off his heade'." "Earlier that day, the government had announced it would spend" "£50 billion to part-nationalise the UK's biggest banks." "At Beckley, a field of maize was harvested for silage." "(HARVESTER ENGINE RUNNING)" "On October 10th, Robinson identified the ruin that he'd been seeking." "It was a disused cement works with a quarry near Hampton Gay on the far side of the Cherwell." "He was diverted by the railway, which followed the route of a canal." "The Oxford Canal was a link from the West Midlands with its coal field to the Thames." "It was completed in 1790 and cut the local price of coal by 40%." "But its construction disturbed the drainage of nearby meadows." "There were several interconnections with the River Cherwell." "About a kilometre north, he saw a group of satellite dishes, which proved to be the hub of Cable and Wireless' global satellite communications network, in another disused quarry." "He discovered that in the 16th century, the place was known as Enslow Hill, the meeting point that Steer had announced for the rising against enclosures." "At 9:00 on the evening of Sunday, November 21st, 1596," "Steer arrived there with his neighbour's apprentice Thomas Horne and Robert Burton, a mason from Beckley." "After two hours, only one other man, Edward Bompass, a fuller from nearby Kirklington, had joined them." "James and Richard Bradshaw, who had assisted" "Steer's promotion of the rising, did not appear." "On October 17th, when Robinson revisited the ruined cement works, he encountered a moment of experiential transformation." "A few days later, he made contact with our research team." "He proposed that we establish an experimental settlement." "In spaces of extraordinary biomorphic architecture, we would devise ways to reform land ownership and democratic government." "We would pioneer the renewal of industry and agriculture after the decline of the global dollar and the disappearance of cheap oil." "The cement works had been established in 1929 and was once one of the largest in the country." "Its limestone quarry was a Site of Special Scientific Interest, well-known for its fossil reptiles since 1820, and had yielded the best extant collection of middle Jurassic crocodiles in the world." "After the surprising outcome of the 2010 election, we were appointed as one of 11 regional centres created to direct economic reconstruction, which we named after Robinson to commemorate his founding vision." "With winter approaching and grain becoming even scarcer, the authorities considered the threat posed by the rising to be very serious." "By December 19th, Steer, the Bradshaws and Roger Ibill, a loader at their father's mill in Hampton Gay, were all in London prisons." "Robert Burton had already reached London before he was arrested." "The London apprentices had led food riots the previous year." "A small committee led by the Attorney General, Sir Edward Coke, and including Francis Bacon, was empowered to examine the arrested under torture." "Coke had a list of 19 'mutinous persons' and about 10 more were named during the examinations." "In January 1597, he recommended to Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen's Secretary of State, that there was evidence to convict Steer, the Bradshaws," "Robert Burton and Edward Bompass, and that they would be prosecuted for treason 'for compassing to levy war against the Queen'." "On February 24th, Burton, Bompass and Richard Bradshaw were indicted at Burford Assizes before a jury of local gentlemen, including two of the nearby enclosers." "The absence of Steer and James Bradshaw suggests they were already dead, victims of torture or the conditions in prison." "Bompass probably met a similar death." "On June 11th, before four judges at Westminster," "Richard Bradshaw and Robert Burton were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered." "They were executed at Enslow Hill, which overlooked some of the enclosures that had provoked them to their fate." "In January 1597, the Privy Council had begun a series of prosecutions of the most notorious enclosers." "For the senior figures in government, the threat to the social order that accompanied enclosure far outweighed any benefit to private individuals." "In that year's parliament, Francis Bacon introduced two bills," "An Acte againste the Decaying of Townes and Houses of Husbandry and An Acte for the Maintenance of Husbandrie and Tillage, that became law in 1598." "On October 27th, Robinson visited the meadows between Shipton and Hampton Gay beside the River Cherwell." "Henry Rathbone had bought Shipton-on-Cherwell Manor in 1546." "His grandson John was one of Steer's intended victims and a member of the Burford jury." "In the 1970s, the manor house belonged to Richard Branson, whose railway franchise later operated some of the passing trains." "At Hampton Gay, the mill was already established in the 13th century." "In 1596, James and Richard Bradshaw's father was the miller." "His loader was Roger Ibill, another of the arrested men." "In 1681, the mill was leased to a papermaker and afterwards remained a paper mill, despite several fires." "It was rebuilt between 1863 and 1873 with the gasworks and steam engine destroyed by another fire in 1875." "By 1880, it was claimed the mill could make about a tonne of paper a day, but several successive tenants went bankrupt." "It closed after the manor house fire in April 1887." "By the late 17th century, the manor had been heavily mortgaged and a later Vincent Barry sold it in 1682." "At the time of the fire, the house was let in two tenements, one of which was occupied by the paper manufacturers." "The railway had been completed in 1850." "In 1874, at about 12:26 on Christmas Eve, a crowded express train from Paddington to Birkenhead left the track at Hampton Gay when a carriage wheel failed, and carriages ran down the embankment." "Thirty-four people were killed and 69 injured." "The first rescuers at the scene were workers from the paper mill." "Some of the injured were cared for at the manor house." "In the church, there is a monument to Vincent Barry and a victim of the train crash is buried in the churchyard." "On November 7th, Robinson gave up his temporary dwelling in the suburbs." "Revisiting his patron near the bypass, he described the recent topographical discoveries and his plan for a new city in the Cherwell Valley." "He wrote to us, explaining who he was and what he'd been doing." "He knew about our work and our resources and suggested we might be able to realise his remarkable proposal." "On November 12th, he returned to Hampton Gay, where the leaves had fallen from the chestnut trees and the ruins could be seen more clearly." "We don't know what he intended." "In that day's entry in his notebook, we found only details of the images he had made with the camera." "(TRAIN APPROACHING)" "The sunlight drew his attention to an area of pink in the field beside the ruins of the manor house." "This is the caravan in which the film cans and the notebook were discovered." "We don't know where he is now, but the last images he made were of a milestone on the Aberystwyth coach road, which measures 58 miles to London."