In 1880, William Morris travels with his family and friends, as they navigate the Thames en-route to Oxford. Their journey is punctuated by champagne breakfasts, musings on matters aesthetic and socialist, flashbacks to Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, and glimpses of Morris stomping about Iceland.

The wife of a public school head becomes gradually aware that her husband has been physically abusing his pupils. Written by the master of late-middle-age morality plays, William Trevor.