Beryl Bainbridge takes the extravagant figure of Samuel Johnson, 18th-century scholar and wit, and brings his last 20 years to rumbustious life through the blunt and mocking observations of his mistress's firstborn daughter Queeney.

Hurtling her readers into small and great events in the company of Garrick and Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney and Boswell, the years spin by. Johnson's wearisomely quarrelling household in Johnson's Court draws him increasingly to the sublime excesses of Streatham Court, presided over by his adored Mrs Thrale (whose wifely duties include poultices to testicles). This odd ménage is gossiped about and gawked at as child births and deaths, comeuppances and flirtations, swallowed buttons and skirmishes on staircases reveal as well as obscure unpalatable shifts of affection to the ageing Johnson and the composed but outraged Queeney.