As the twentieth century approaches, politics and extreme weather have combined to turn the world upside down and the changes are still happening.
Germany is gone; Central and Western Europe now try to adjust to new realities.
A series of natural disasters sweep across the Stuart realms and an American millionaire's tendency to seasickness changes the shape of international trade for ever.
Trying to kill the monarch becomes an international obsession whilst a British politician's off-the-cuff remark results in a major political quarrel between Great Britain and The United States of British North America.
As Africa falls more and more under British control, the formerly closed kingdoms of the Far East have to come to terms with new and pervasive western influences.
The action is panoramic, extending across countries and continents. From Dundee and Glenfinnan to the Pacific, from Pennsylvania and Penang to Timbuktu and from Brazil and Suez to Peking, this ambitious sixth volume of the popular "House of Stuart Sequence" takes us on a journey through a world which might have been.