It is May 1917: war overshadows the haunting beauty of spring in Zennor. As U-boats nose the Cornish coastline, the village is alive with talk of spies. It is a world of call-up and telegrams, secrets and suspicion, and no one is immune. Not D. H. Lawrence and his German wife Frieda, who have retreated from London to a cottage in Zennor. Not Clare Coyne, a young girl who comes under the influence of the Lawrences, nor her beloved cousin John William, who is home on leave from the trenches, shell-shocked. A beautiful and inspired novel - John Le Carre.