An abandoned orphan, young Dick Barton’s prospects look grim when he is wrongly expelled for bullying; but things take a turn for the better when a mysterious benefactor takes him under his wing and proposes a career as a national hero. As his education in what it takes to be the perfect Englishman progresses, Barton is drawn into an unlikely plot involving dodgy foreigners, Machiavellian Welshmen and the unsavoury side of Morris Dancing, which threatens the very core of British life.