Warlow begins his seven-year term of isolation. It is 1793 and planks are nailed across the basement door.

Warlow and Powyss will meet again in 1800. When the experiment is completed, Warlow will get £50 a year for life.

Herbert Powyss lives on an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman’s fashionable investigation into botanical experimentation. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science – something consequential enough to present to The Royal Society in London.

Influenced by something he’s read, he decides to conduct a radical investigation into the Resilience of the Human Mind Without Society. He places an ad for a suitable guinea pig.

Only one man is desperate enough to apply for the job - a semi-literate, angry abuser.

What could possibly go wrong?

Written by Alix Nathan and abridged by Jeremy Osborne.

Read by Robert Glenister.

Producer: Karen Rose

A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in July 2019. Show less