Charles Ashworth is privileged, pampered and pleased with himself. As Bishop of Starbridge in 1965 he `purrs along as effortlessly as a well-tuned Rolls-Royce` while he proclaims his famous `absolute truths` to a society which he sees - with rage and revulsion - as increasingly immoral and disordered. But then a catastrophe tears his life apart and confronts him with the real absolute truths, truths which so shatter him that he finds himself stripped of his pride and struggling for survival.