English-born jockey Joseph Clements takes a job as head of the Imperial Stud Farm in Russia at the dawn of the Revolution, and there he falls in love with Katya, who is engaged to a nobleman.
Peter Duff Hart-Davis, generally known as Duff Hart-Davis was a British biographer, naturalist and journalist, who wrote for The Independent. He was married to Phyllida Barstow and had one son and one daughter, the journalist Alice Hart-Davis. He lived at Owlpen, in Gloucestershire.