A Very English Genius is a BBC documentary telling the story of how Michael Ventris became obsessed with the quest of cracking the earliest known writing system, Linear B, which originated in Greece.
The documentary begins with his introduction to the ancient script, on a school trip to a museam, continues through his endeavours to crack the language, and ends with his unexplained death, providing various theories to what exactly caused his final demise.
The discovery was made all the more remarkable by the fact that Ventris was no more than an amateur enthusiast, a man passionately and often tortuously determined to crack the linguistic code which had puzzled experts, archaeologists and academics for three decades.