Damian Le Bas, whose debut about Gypsy Britain, The Stopping Places (Chatto & Windus), has been short-listed for Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, will present the first episode of a new series on on BBC 4, A Very British History, at 9pm next Monday (February 11). The programme “explores how Gypsy people in the 1960s were forced to abandon their nomadic way of life for a more settled existence”.