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When he was thirteen, Dave Win met the Hadlows. A boy from a humble background, of Burmese descent on his father's side, he was to receive a scholarship to an elite school thanks to a philanthropic couple. The father, Mark, became his mentor and protector, and the mother, Cara, also showed him affection. However, his relationship with the couple's son, Giles, was more complicated. In his old age, Dave recalls that encounter that marked his life. It forms part of a memoir in which he reminisces about his life over several decades: his first youthful romances, his passion for the theater, which would lead him to become an actor, and, with the arrival of Richard, the unexpected arrival of true love and happiness, well into his sixties. The paths of Dave and Giles, linked in childhood by the altruistic gesture of the latter's parents, could not be more different: while Dave pursued an interest in the arts and an acting career, Giles became an ultraconservative politician who would eventually hold ministerial positions. Through these two dissimilar destinies and Dave's adventures, Alan Hollinghurst reconstructs half a century of social change in contemporary Britain.