Gloomsbury

Talk of a general strike is in the air as Lionel and Ginny Fox pay a visit to Sizzlinghurst Castle to see Vera Sackcloth-Vest and Henry Mickleton.

Green-fingered Sapphist Vera Sackcloth-Vest shares a bijou castle in Kent with her devoted husband Henry, but longs for exotic adventures with nervy novelist Ginny Fox and wilful beauty Venus Traduces. It's 1921, the dawn of modern love, life and lingerie, but Vera still hasn't learnt how to boil a kettle.

Ginny is writing a new book and wants to pick Vera's brains about her aristocratic childhood. But all is not well. Henry thinks that Ginny is a bad influence on Vera because Ginny is so highly strung and Lionel thinks that Vera is too aristocratic and not socialist enough for Ginny.

Terrified that the oppressed people of Staplehurst will rise up and storm the castle, they flirt with a posh kind of socialism until the working class DH Lollipop pops in with his demi-mondaine Venus Traduces and tells them that he likes them just the way they are.