The Australian Women's Register

As World War Two rages, a small team of scientists at Oxford University, led by Australian Howard Florey, make one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine: penicillin. As news of their funny yellow powder leaks out to the press, wartime Britain looked for a hero. Instead of Florey and the Oxford team, they choose someone else to shower with honours, Alexander Fleming, How it happened is a fascinating story of wartime scarcity, personal conflicts, and a sobering lesson in the damage done to truth by wartime propaganda. There is documentation associated with the production of the television documentary held in the NFSA collection.