In search of Spanish flu.

With the threat of a flu pandemic in the air, this programme follows virologist Professor John Oxford as he and a specialist team attempt to exhume the corpse of Sir Mark Sykes who is thought to have died of Spanish flu during the 1918-19 epidemic. Sykes was buried in lead thus making his corpse a potentially rich source of genetic information as if the coffin is sealed the corpse should be relatively undecomposed. Robert Brown, historian from the Wellcome Foundation, meets 104-year-old Florence Herrington, a Spanish flu survivor; he reads accounts from diaries of those alive during the 1919 epidemic. Oxford and his team are successful in retrieving some samples from Sir Mark's corpse, now they must begin their research.