After a life of literary acclaim and public shame Norman Douglas, knowing he is dying, sends out invitations to his friends and proteges for a final lunch on Capri. Graham Greene, Harold Acton, Nancy Cunard, Gracie Fields, Elizabeth David and the shadowy Eric are there. They have all been touched by this extraordinary figure, half Roman emperor, half Roman taxi driver, the moralist of amorality. Some are the keepers of deep secrets, the seeds of which were planted in the First and Second World Wars, but it isn't until a young caterer in the 1980s has a chance meeting with Elizabeth David that the fruits of those secrets begin to emerge. Evoking the idyll of Sicily before WWI, the tensions of Vichy France and the drudgery of post-WWII Britain with extraordinary skill, Roger Williams' first novel is a tour de force of intriguing eccentricity.