Welcome to the world of Oscar Wilde, H.G.Welles, P.C.Wren, John Buchan, Saki, Pooter and...Heath Robinson. This is Late Victorian Britain as it might have been, should have been, could have been and was have been (sic). A world where Queen Victoria came out of mourning and married the Maharajah and the laws of physics were gently adjusted so that clockwork, steam and the electric fluid could be pushed to the limits of technology. Here pith helmets and stammering Brigadiers battle with Cossack enemies out to ruin the empire and rule the world, crusty colonels and poetic dreamers cross swords with formidable Baronesses, slippery politicians parley interest into principles across the parliamentary dance floor and bright young things fall in love with dashing young chaps at Henley. The situations in which our heroes find themselves in may seem oddly familiar to anyone interested in Victorian history, largely because much of the inspiration is drawn from actual, genuine archive materials and the characters involved are based on real politicians, sometimes quoted verbatim - hard as that may be to believe (or not). The subject of this story, the Balkan Crisis of 1876, did actually take place and had things fallen out a little differently the war that followed would actually have happened, only it would have been called the First World War come forty years too early. Our hero is Digby Kirkby, a young Lieutenant off to his first war, and about to be battered by weather, Automatons and Cossacks, jilted by the delightful Letitia in favour of rising politico, Ned Pilkington and eventually pitched into the full scale Battle of Constantinople. Meanwhile, the politics of war are not neglected as the giants of the parliamentary establishment, Prime Minister Duntry, the Earl of Wastbury, The Almighty Turnstone and Mordecai Muttonbury battle it out in contests no less vicious or deadly for using words rather than guns. And through it all looms the battleship figure of Lady Barthorpe, a force of nature in herself, tameable only, it seems, by an ex-Confederate officer in extraordinary circumstance. The action moves between London, Egypt, Bulgaria and Constantinople and takes in Alexandrian brothels, steamy hammams, the Reform Club on Pall Mall, the Topkapi palace and a racy bar in Leicester Square. There are also airship and submersible adventures involving inventions that are only just this side of Heath Robinson and in the case of the Circular Ironclads and piano-wire guided torpedoes, genuine Victorian inventions.