Britain in the nineteen fifties; it was a time of austerity, the cold war, paranoia over the loss of empire and the spread of communism. 
Sir Roland Derwentwater and his enigmatic secretary, Mrs. Giles ran the Coordination department for British intelligence. Sergeant Archibald Moss of special branch was a man of these times. Working class, bigoted, self-opinionated, with a real talent for self-preservation, he was also, unbeknown to himself, a puppet in the schemes of the Department that would eventually make him an unlikely hero.