Michael Portillo strikes out to explore the Britain of his youth, starting at Preston’s Fulwood Barracks and heading across to Bury Bolton Street station in Greater Manchester.

Michael’s journey through north west England from Preston to Hebden Bridge reaches Greater Manchester, where Michael celebrates new beginnings for the nation in the years after the Second World War.

Greater Manchester’s Metrolink tram delivers Michael to the former cotton town of Oldham. He heads across to Wakefield and the striking postwar sculptures of Barbara Hepworth.

From Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Michael visits the National Coal Mining Museum for England at Caphouse Colliery. He pauses to admire the tall spire of Wakefield Cathedral and its resident peregrine falcons before heading to the banks of the River Calder. In a vast factory, he finds the headquarters of a shirt manufacturer, Double Two, a pioneering wartime business co-founded by a Jewish refugee from Austria.

In Leeds, Michael heads for the Chapeltown area to investigate the origins of the Leeds West Indian Carnival in 1967 and try his hand on the steel drums. In the city's Harehills district, he admires the back-to-back houses once condemned as slums but now highly prized for their character and community.

Michael Portillo continues his postwar exploration of north west England in Bradford, Shipley and Hebden Bridge. In Centenary Square in Bradford, Michael encounters Bradford’s literary giant JB Priestley, author of An Inspector Calls. Just north of Bradford, at Shipley station, Michael discovers a nature reserve in the middle of a car park that's home to more than 14 species of butterfly and moth.