It is 1913 - just prior to England's entry into World War I - and Edwardian England is about to vanish into history. A group of men and women gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a shooting party. Opulent, adulterous, moving through the rituals of eating and slaughter, they are obtuse and decorative finale of an era.
A man that studies Happiness must sit alone like a Sparrow upon the House Top, and like a Pelican in the Wilderness' -- Thomas Traherne. Celebrated novelist Isabel Colegate explores the lives and works of those who've followed the call of solitude, from Lao Tzu and the Desert Fathers to Wordsworth and Thoreau.