cruisy bathrooms. One night he solicits a policeman, who arrests Charles for public indecency. Despite his rank, Charles is ruthlessly prosecuted by a conservative politician of the time, who wants to make an example of him. The politician is William's grandfather; now the Viscount Beckwith. Will's wealth, his rank and his leisured gay existence are all built on a foundation of homosexual persecution. He also learns that Charles and Bill met in prison, where Bill, then a young man, had been thrown for having a love-affair with a boy three years younger than himself. The theme of natural love and sexuality destroyed by elite oppression is very powerful. While Charles is in prison, he learns that Taha, the African man, has been beaten to death in an incident that is apparently racially motivated. After learning about his grandfather's past, Will decides that he cannot now write Charles's biography, nor was he intended to do so. Charles has been educating him on his own past. Will talks on the phone with Gavin, his brother in law. Gavin tells Will that he knew it was Will's grandfather who imprisoned Charles. A past perhaps so distant that the archaeologist knows it where the historian does not. Rupert has been told to watch out for Arthur; he reports that he has seen him with his brother Harold. Will goes to Phil's hotel. He encounters a rich Argentine who propositions him. Will accepts until he finds that the man is obsessed with gay pornographic conventions, costumes and sex toys. Will finds this all slightly ridiculous and is not aroused. He refuses to consent to sex and leaves. Upstairs, he discovers Phil having sex with Bill. Disoriented, he leaves and wanders to James's and then the Corry, where Charles Nantwich reveals his designs in giving Will the diaries. Will and James go to Staines's to see a film, not a piece of pornography but an archive recording of Ronald Firbank in old age. The novel closes. Characters William Beckwith, 25 years old, an idle young aristocrat; sometimes also called Will. Charles, Baron Nantwich, 83 years old, an old aristocrat; he was jailed for being a homosexual. Lewis, Lord Nantwich's butler before he gets fired. Arthur Edison Hope, William Beckwith's black boyfriend at the outset; eastender. Harold Edison Hope, Arthur's brother, a drug dealer. Tony, a friend of Harold's whom Arthur believed he had killed in a