I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

1811, the market town of Kendall in the north of England.

Smog filled the air as a seven-year-old boy hobbled into the wool mill.

It would have been sensory overload.

The factory floor would have been a really noisy, dusty environment.

There's lots of people milling around machines, doing different tasks.

The boy's name was William Dodd.

He dragged himself past other boys and girls his age,

some making the coarse woolen cloth known as Kendall Green.

There's also a kind of human machinery servicing this as well.

So you'll see young children diving underneath machines to clean up under them.

You'll see operatives standing by their machines, watching the processes taking place,

whether that's spinning the thread or weaving it

into cloth. William took up his position by the slubbing Billy, a machine used as part of the

process of spinning wool. He lent over the machine to clean out residual fibers. Some of the accounts

of him describe him as barely looking like a human being

because his body was so bent and damaged.

...