It's London, and the Sixties are in full bloom. Clelia Crespi is young, beautiful, brilliant and soon to go up to Oxford - also up for anything. She is the young sister of politician James Crespi, who is about to be destroyed by a sex scandal. On the advice of ambitious civil servant Nigel Rawlinson, Clelia's legal guardian, she must quickly get engaged before the scandal breaks, so she won't be tainted goods forever. Enter Guy Blandford: aristocrat, brilliant Oxford undergraduate, champion cricketer, all round golden boy, and enamoured with Clelia. The perfect would be husband. If only, that is, he could keep his hands off the handsome and erudite young men who surround him and want a piece of him. And if only Clelia could keep her hands off Nigel, who is besotted with her, against his better judgment. Everybody wants Clelia...but no one can really have her.

Nina Stanger was a trailblazing civil liberties barrister and author who lived in London in the 1960s and 70s. She achieved tabloid fame for defending the downtrodden and social pariahs: political protestors, squatters, and terrorists, in cases such as the Miss World bombing and the Angry Brigade. She was known for her beauty, intelligence, and bohemian, flamboyant style. In 1987 she moved to Florence, Italy, where she surrounded herself in art history and comparative legal studies, focusing on preserving the institution of trial by jury. Nina tragically died in 1999 of a pulmonary embolism, but not before completing her first novel, 'Falcon'.