Political shenanigans, honours for sale, local councillors and putative MPs feature in Henry Arthur Jones’s 1913 comedy.

Mary Whichello, the leader of society in a middle sized manufacturing town, is distinctly put out when her husband’s main rival Thomas Bodsworth is knighted for his services to the local community. Drastic measures are required. A dinner party at the home of a young solicitor, anxious to make his way and marry Mary’s sister, provides an ideal opportunity, especially when Lady Bodsworth presents such a sitting target. The events of the night disrupt the whole of Warkinstall for months and years to come and even reverberate to Westminster.