It is 1870, and Albertian Britain is in the grip of conflicting forces. Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; Libertines oppose restrictive and unjust laws and flood the country with propaganda demanding a society based on beauty and creativity; while The Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic, sexuality, drugs and anarchy. Accompanied by the diminutive and pain-loving poet, Algernon Swinburne, Burton's latest mission in his role as King's Spy finds them dispatched to that most exotic and perilous of destinations: Africa.