1942 and the world is at war. Australia and its government–and two people in particular–look to events in Asia with alarm. ‘Paperboy’ Tyson’s privlieged relationship with the Prime Minister, Johnny Mulhall, gives him insight into the man’s public and private affairs. Maimed in the first world war, Tyson, now a political reporter, knows all too well the feelings of his countryman and Mulhall shares this ambivalence, on the one hand rallying the nation to action and, on the other, feeling the burden of the thousands of young men he sends to south-Asia. Australia struggles to find a national identity and a place in the world. Mulhall finds himself strangely entangled in a personal dilemma which is no less weighty than the demans of his public role as a monarch in a cut-rate kingdom.