Honourable Ancestor

Giles Savernake, everything a young Englishman should be. Well-educated, groomed, smooth. For him life was easy. His family was rich, living on a fortune founded at the turn of the 18th century by an ancestor who traded in China.

A fortune built on opium, the drug that had emasculated and possessed half the population of China.

And when Savernake found where his family's money had come from he felt he had to go to China to make amends.

China just after the 1914-18 War. Riddled with intrigue. Still strongly under the influence of the British traders.

There he meets John Tulloch, the alcoholic editor of a third-rate newspaper.

Wing, the Chinese philosopher-banker whose ancestors also traded in opium.

And the beautiful White Russian Anna for whom Savernake was willing to sacrifice everything.