The author was born in Oklahoma in 1934 and moved to England with his parents and sister in 1939. At the outbreak of War he returned to Oklahoma with his mother and sister, though his father remained in England. At the end of the War the family was reunited in England. During the following years the family spent many summers by the Lake of Geneva, Switzerland. It was partly these memories which brought the author to revisit the Lake, and partly his interest in the great figures of the Romantic movement associated with the Lake. In particular, he retraced the voyage which the poets Byron and Shelley took around the Lake in the summer of 1816. Apart from Byron and Shelley this brought the author to reflect on the lives, thought and careers of other persons associated with the Lake, including Mary Shelley, Edward Gibbon, J-J Rousseau, William Beckford, Benjamin Constant and Mme de Stael, reminders of whom he encountered in the course of his week on the Lake.