Jake, Clio and Julius Hirsh and their cousin Lady Grace Stretton formed a charmed circle in those lost innocent days before the Great War - united against the world. Old now, Clio recounts their story for her biographer: Jake's wartime experiences, which moved him to work as a doctor in the London slums; Clio and Grace, flappers flitting through bohemian Fitzrovia to emerge as literary lion and pioneering Member of Parliament respectively; the music that drowned for Julius the crash of jackboots in thirties Berlin. But for herself, Clio remembers a different story. Desperate lies and bitter secrets, hopeless love and careless betrayal, jealous loyalties more like fetters. And above all, the truth about Grace, beautiful, destructive siren at the centre of the circle.