There was another war, some 150 years ago, which was unpopular at home -- the death rate shocking, the military strategy confused -- and the first on which the media had a major influence. The Street Philosopher -- the nineteenth-century term for a s ociety writer, a gossip columnist -- captures this scene brilliantly. 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, Thoma s 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, Thomas's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way.