Tom Holland

So he went by that instead.

It's difficult not to remember him as this romanticized figure.

The rags to riches to rags, the fiery temper.

The brilliant innovator...

yet saddled with personal demons and professional challenges throughout his life.

I think what we're getting here is a picture of somebody who is energetic, getting into scrapes, whether it's falling downstairs, whether it's going to sleep in a room where varnish is drying, whether it's having his head cracked open.

I think we have to remember we're now talking early 19th century.

Musical instrument making in Europe at this time was not done in big factories.

There was no industrialisation involved.

It was small, artisanal, individual craftsmen.

It's much more a craft-oriented tradition.

People would put these boreholes in more or less wherever they felt it looked about right.

He came up with the measurements.

He decided to make this a much more scientific operation than previously in determining where the holes actually needed to be cut.

Brussels was very small at the time and Paris was one of the major musical centres in Europe.

And Paris was particularly the centre of brass wind manufacture.

You had to be seen to be producing your new brass and wind instruments if you were going to be successful.

If you could get a contract with the French military to supply brass instruments or brass wind instruments, then that was going to be the backbone of your business.

You were going to sell far more instruments to the French military than you ever were going to the orchestras in Paris.

It's a little bit difficult to describe.