Scott-King's Modern Europe

This is "the story of a summer holiday, a light tale." Scott-King is a middle-aged English schoolmaster, "an adult, an intellectual, a classical scholar, almost a poet" - slightly bald and slightly corpulent. After twenty-one years as classical master at Granchester he has become a school institution, "old Scottie," given to precise lamentations on the subject of modern decadence. He found his special subject for study in the works of the obscure poet, Bellorius, who had died three centuries, before that is in 1646, in Neutralia, then a happy kingdom of the Habsburg Empire but now a totalitarian state in modern Europe. Scott-King wrote an essay to commemorate the approaching tercentenary of Bellorius's death, and the publication of this essay in a learned journal brought Scott-King an invitation from the Neutralian Government to take part, along with distinguished scholars from all over the world, in the tercentenary celebration. He accepted and, in teh company of a professor of Roman Law and a columnist, Miss Bombaum, was flown to Neutralia and plunged at once into the nightmare of totalitarian hospitality and into the life of Modern Europe.