For John Lyon, an orphaned boy from probincial Ireland, it is both an hour and a curse to judge the fate of a man regarded by many as the nation's greatest champion. Over a small coffee pot in the tiny deanery room, Swfit recounts the story of his life to Lyon - his time in Ireland, his career in London with Alexander Pope and the Queen's Court, his deanship in Dublin - as if he were a character in his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels. It seems that his insanity is absolute; but Swift's story, just like his works, has an unnerving way of challenging and changing what you know to be normal.

There may yet be evidence enough to save him from the humiliation of Bedlam. By Lyon, it seems, has an agenda of his own...