Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

It is 1870, and Albertian Britain is in the grip of conflicting forces. Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; Libertines oppose restrictive and unjust laws and flood the country with propaganda demanding a society based on beauty and creativity; while The Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic, sexuality, drugs and anarchy. Accompanied by the diminutive and pain-loving poet, Algernon Swinburne, Burton's latest mission in his role as King's Spy finds them dispatched to that most exotic and perilous of destinations: Africa.