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Alasdair Cochrane, Political Philosopher and New Generation Thinker, visits Whirlow Hall Farm Trust to mix it with sheep and pigs as he follows the twists and turns of Thomas Hardy's interest in animals. He explores with John Miller, who teaches English Literature at Sheffield University, the ways in which Thomas Hardy's animals have their own internal realities and far from being the backdrop to Hardy's Wessex, drive the plots and play important parts in the lives of the human characters from Tess to Jude. And he talks to Elisha Cohn at Cornell University about her explorations of the writer's philosophical development. For Hardy, Darwin's Theory of Evolution had profound ethical implications for the way humans interact with their fellow creatures.

Reader: Sam Dale
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.