IT seems that even before the days of Escape to the Country and Relocation, Relocation, there were a lot of people who dreamed of quitting the rat race and living a simpler life out in the sticks.

In the last episode of his fascinating series, Ian Hislop dates our obsession with an idealised rural lifestyle to the middle of the 19th Century, when Britain had become the world’s first urbanised nation.

Painters such as Victorian watercolourist Myles Birket Foster began to depict the countryside as an alternative to the overcrowded, unsanitary cities, where instead of steam trains and slums, you would find thatched cottages and apple-cheeked maids. The reality was somewhat different, especially as the beginning of the 20th Century, when an agricultural depression led to a rural exodus.

Hislop looks at how these anxieties were reflected in the work of musician Cecil Sharp and Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien.