In 1955 a surgeon and his two young sons move into a dilapidated London mansion previously occupied by a germ warfare researcher. The friendless younger boy takes possession of the abandoned laboratories and becomes a highly-paid technologist. His bookish and impractical near-twin brother finds his niche as an eccentric anarchist historian. After the eldest son dies, his more successful brother can no longer hold a steady job and becomes a drifter living by casual labour in America. Is his craving for solitude the result of the early cruelty of his insane mother, as he believes? Has it got worse because he is no longer his father's favourite now that a young stepmother has taken his place? Or is it the result of something that he has never been able to talk about, although he cannot get it out of his mind? This is their story.
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