It’s the summer of 1858 and everyone who can has fled London. As a foul miasma hangs over the capital, Sir Edwin Landseer is toiling at a fever pitch. Because England needs lions, England expects lions, and fifteen years to finish a monument like Nelson’s column is a disgrace. But even as lions stalk the sculptor’s alcohol-fuelled nightmares, his dreams take him elsewhere. No longer an old man losing his grip on reality, but a young artist eager for life, recognition and love. Traversing decades, the story leaps back and forth, from the squalor of Victorian London to Landseer’s youth in the waning Regency as the Duchess – twenty years his senior – bursts into Edwin’s life.