Howard and Barbara Kirk , fashionable Watermouth University's well-known progressive couple, are throwing one of their celebrated parties. Another fresh term—new faces to radicalise, old issues and adversaries to be confronted. History needs some action and Howard has just the scheme for an autumn of disruption.

The Kirk seminar is an advanced scholastic encounter with George Carmody, the perfect teaching aid and the only boy in the university with a trouser press. For Howard, a bonus in confronting the liberal establishment. But first there's the party to be scrutinised with Flora, and indeed Annie and Felicity.

The departmental meeting. A setting of legendary divisiveness for the fruition of Howard's master plan. But with Professor Marvin a reluctant combatant and Howard's varied extra-mural activities under novel surveillance, the inevitability of the plot is no longer totally in the author's hands.

History charges everyone a price for the stands they choose to make. Howard seems to be about to pay his dues, but in the fight for his academic life, the University is the battlefield. As in any war the choice of survivors—and casualties—is very arbitrary and contingent.