Nick Guest, a gay Oxford graduate, lodges with the politically connected Fedden family in Notting Hill from 1983 to 1987 — the years of Thatcher's ascendancy, the AIDS crisis, and the cocaine boom. The novel is about beauty, class, and the illusion of belonging.
Will Beckwith, 25, aristocratic and promiscuous, spends the last summer before AIDS transforms gay London life. He is asked by an elderly peer, Lord Nantwich, to write his biography — and discovers a connection between Nantwich's past and his own grandfather's role in the persecution of gay men.