After being offered a 100,000 pound advance to write a book on the twentieth century, a historian/writer struggling with depression takes to London to begin this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.