King George V, a monarch often deemed stodgy and reactionary; Elizabeth Bowen, a brilliant Anglo-Irish writer, exposed as a World War II English spy monitoring her native Ireland; St. John Philby, father of the notorious spy Kim Philby; and Nancy Astor, an American divorcee who became the first female member of Parliament, make up the quartet of personalities through which John Halperin explores a world of intrigue existing just below the glittering surface of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.

Describing the age as simultaneously conventional and progressive, Victorian and modern, Halperin considers the impact that these leading figures had on their era, as well as the extent to which they themselves were shaped by the age in which they lived.