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Richard Cork explores how the First World War figured powerfully, and in strikingly different ways, in the lives and work of the early avant-garde art movement in Europe.

We hear about Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of futurism, visiting industrial cities including London in 1912, urging artists to rally and embrace modernity. It moved artists such as Jacob Epstein and Wyndham Lewis as well as the poet Ezra Pound to create significant works celebrating industrialisation.

Richard also talks to minimalist composer Michael Nyman about the work of David Bomberg another of the futurist artists influenced by Marinetti. A longtime admirer, Nyman is contemplating composing an opera on Bomberg's work and its relationship to the First World War.