Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge

In 1909, the largest department store in London's West End, designed and built from scratch, opened in Oxford Street in a glorious burst of publicity. The mastermind behind the facade was American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge: maverick businessman, risk-taker, dandy and one of the greatest showmen the retail world has ever known.

His talents were to create the seduction of shopping, and as his success and fame grew, so did his glittering lifestyle: mansions, yachts, gambling, racehorses - and mistresses. From the glamour of Edwardian England, through the turmoil of the Great War and the heady excesses of the 1920s and beyond, Selfridges Department Store was 'a theatre with the curtain going up at 9 o'clock each morning'. Mr Selfridge reveals the captivating story of the rise and fall of the man who revolutionised the way we shop.