Fifty years ago, at the end of one of the grimmest years of war, Sir William Beveridge captured the public imagination by unveiling an epoch-making battle plan to slay the domestic "giants" of idleness, ignorance, disease, squalor and want. But who was this unlikely hero?
David Walker examines the career of the "People's William", and discovers how an Edwardian gentleman with social pretensions became the ostensible founder of the post-war welfare state.
Producer Simon Coates
Stereo