The man who wrote Mars, the Bringer of War, arguably the most violent orchestral music ever conceived, was a shy, asthmatic vegetarian socialist with terrible eyesight and a nerve condition that ruined his hands. This episode explores the staggering gap between Gustav Holst and his music, following him from a family of working musicians who invented the aristocratic von in their surname, through years paying rent as a trombonist in seaside bands and theater pits, to a lifetime teaching music to schoolgirls at St Paul's and working-class adults at Morley College.

We trace how Holst escaped the shadow of Wagner with the help of his brutally honest friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, learned Sanskrit to translate the Rig Veda hymns himself, absorbed the English folk song revival, and discovered astrology on a Spanish holiday. Those threads converge ...