Sir Francis Dashwood is Britain's premier baronet and a descendant of the eighteenth-century founder of the notorious Hellfire Club, which first met at the Dashwoods' famous ancestral home, the Palladian West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire.

For many years Sir Francis had his own underwriting agency at Lloyd's, and as a Lloyd's Name he has suffered severe losses as the insurance market has been rocked by recent disasters. This is the background of his first novel, which retails the exploits of an innocent young man who finds himself the victim of an unscrupulous Lloyd's syndicate head. In order to avoid financial ruin the hero, along with his hot air ballooning girlfriend Luscious Lucia, plans an audacious robbery - Lloyd's priceless
Nelson silver.

In among the car chases, deals with crooked fences and erotic bedroom scenes Sir Francis expresses some hard-hitting home truths about the way the powerful institution called Lloyd's of London is run, and about the essential reforms which must take place if this now scandal-ridden pillar of the Establishment is to survive into the 21st century.