In 1851, the Great Exhibition drew crowds to the Crystal Palace like moths to a lamp. But one young visitor resisted its lure – when taken to the exhibition, William Morris refused to go in.The image of a 17-year-old Morris skulking outside this Victorian temple to manufacturing is the stuff of which artistic myths are made. At the time, however, Morris had no thought of becoming a craftsman. It was at Oxford, where he went in 1855 with the vague intention of entering the Church, that he discovered the writings of John Ruskin, made friends with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and – after the briefest training in an architect’s office – embarked with Burne-Jones on an aesthetic “Crusade and Holy Warfare against the Age”. The rest is art and design history