Alistair and Miles, both with aristocratic connections, start their first year at Oxford University though they are very different, Miles is down to earth and happy to have a girlfriend from a lower background, Lauren, whilst Alistair is a snob with aspirations to follow his uncle, a Tory MP. The common bond is that both become members of the Riot Club, a long established elite drinking club priding itself on hedonism and the belief that money can buy anything. Having been barred from most establishments in Oxford they have their annual dinner at the function room in a country pub, where their rowdy behaviour angers other patrons though they reimburse Chris, the landlord. They hire a prostitute but she refuses to perform group sex, then one of them rings Lauren, whom they importune to Max's horror. Getting progressively more drunk and ingesting drugs they start to trash the room and when Chris comes to complain Alistair savagely assaults him, landing him in hospital. Though shocked ...

At the height of the London blitz Dr Lennox Collins,pioneer of the new forensic science,is enlisted by DI Wilkins after prostitute Mary Williams is strangled and a swastika carved on her tongue. Wilkins' chief suspect is shy young Anglo-German Wilfred Ziegler,who found the body but Lennox dismisses this as Ziegler is left-handed and the killer was not.The trail leads to the Metropole club,frequented by Mary,where Lennox's new assistant Molly meets the sinister owner Danny Hastings but then two more women are killed in the same way. A rent boy places closet gay actor Ronald Terry at the scene of the last murder though Terry denies seeing anything. However Lennox and Molly are soon investigating Terry's apparent suicide - which they work out is murder. Lennox takes Hastings' DNA but is attacked by men in gas masks and,when Wilkins is taken off the case after bullying Ziegler into a confession, it looks as if Hastings has corrupt police officers in his pocket. Acting separately Lennox ...

In the early 1960's, sixteen year old Jenny Mellor lives with her parents in the London suburb of Twickenham. On her father's wishes, everything that Jenny does is in the sole pursuit of being accepted into Oxford, as he wants her to have a better life than he. Jenny is bright, pretty, hard working but also naturally gifted. The only problems her father may perceive in her life is her issue with learning Latin, and her dating a boy named Graham, who is nice but socially awkward. Jenny's life changes after she meets David Goldman, a man over twice her age. David goes out of his way to show Jenny and her family that his interest in her is not improper and that he wants solely to expose her to cultural activities which she enjoys. Jenny quickly gets accustomed to the life to which David and his constant companions, Danny and Helen, have shown her, and Jenny and David's relationship does move into becoming a romantic one...