The unlikely story of how one man with some ex-WWII army equipment eventually turned a muddy field in Cheshire into a key site in the space race. That man was Bernard Lovell, and his telescope at Jodrell Bank would be used at the height of the Cold War by both the Americans and the Russians to track their competing spacecraft. It also put Britain at the forefront of radio astronomy, a new science which transformed our knowledge of space and provided the key to understanding the most mind-bending theory of the beginnings of the universe – the Big Bang”.

Talk: How Britain Won the Space Race

Chloë Penman is a documentary filmmaker in specialist factual, arts and history programmes. Her first film was about the history of Jodrell Bank for BBC Four since then she’s made films on a variety of subjects from Photography to Queen Victoria for both BBC Four and BBC Two.