Michael, having repeatedly risked his life as an Air Force pilot, is now back in his comfortable and privileged existence as a fellow of a major Oxford College. After the excitements of her years in SOE, his cousin Christine is attempting to fulfil her tutor's high expectations of her as a classical scholar of note. For the German prisoners crowded together in a camp on the outskirts of the town there have been no such returns. But at least the previously severe edict against any sort of fraternisation has been in some measure relaxed. So it is that a chance conversation that Michael initiates with a solitary prisoner, Thomas, before a picture in the Ashmolean Museum precipitates a friendship between the fastidious don and a little group of prisoners, whom he then eventually introduces to Christine. To a drama of continuing antagonisms, nascent reconciliations and obsessive love he brings all his gifts as a master storyteller and psychologist.