The street philosopher - Matthew Plampin

'In the thick, soupy darkness, the body lying before him seemed to blur and shift becoming someone else altogether. Kitson stared disbelievingly at his dreaded form, tears coursing across his cheeks and chin: and his guilt pressed down on him like a slab of icy granite, crushing him slowly beneath his weight.'

1854 - Crimea

Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier's man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals.

Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Kitson returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a 'street philosopher', a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition, as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Kitson's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying day...