In the summer of 1815 an extraordinary hand-painted map was published in London It present England and Wales in a beguiling and unfamiliar mixture of lines and patches - the product of one man's obsession with rocks, a passion that sustained him while the rest of his life slid into ruin This first geological map of anywhere in the world was made by William Smith It was not until 1829 that his genius was realised This is an extraordinary tale of the father of modern geology