Thomas Hardy wrote some of the most devastating novels in the English language — Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure — and then stopped writing fiction entirely after the public backlash against Jude was so vicious that he never recovered. He spent his final thirty years writing poetry instead. When he died, Britain could not agree on where to bury him: his heart went to Stinted in Dorset, and his ashes went to Westminster Abbey. Legend says the heart was briefly stored in a biscuit tin, and a cat may have gotten to it first.

This episode traces Hardy from his Dorset stonemason origins through the novels that scandalized and enthralled Victorian England, the retreat into poetry, and the bizarre double burial that split his remains between two counties.

• Hardy's working-class Dorset origins and the architectural career he a ...