Sebastian's town apartment overlooked the Snowdon Aviary in Regent's Park and was stuffed with elegant impersonal furniture, more of a showflat than a home. The only room with any character was the games room, a large spare bedroom filled with board games and puzzles of every description. His 'country pile', he assured Vince, was an altogether more prepossessing sight, a vast Georgian estate in Hertfordshire. He occasionally rang someone called St John Warner, and someone else called Caton-James, and apparently spent evenings playing board games with his friends, but never invited Vince to meet any of them. There was little evidence of the network of powerful connections one imagined every honourable young gentleman to maintain and exploit.

Minor caveats aside, their meetings continued to yield fascinating rewards. One cliché appeared to be true; the isolation of Sebastian's upbringing as he passed from nanny to boarding school contrasted sharply with the warmth and chaos of Vince's childhood home. He was particularly determined not to discuss his relationship with his father, or to set out his hopes and fears for times to come.

Vince taped the interviews, carefully labelling each cassette and indexing it for later reference. Sebastian paid for lunches and dinners, lent cash and cabfares he clearly did not expect to be repaid, and generally behaved like a decent friend. It was a lifestyle to which Vince felt he could easily become accustomed.

Still, an unspoken barrier remained firmly in place between them, preventing any true closeness from developing.

'CONSTITUTIONALLY England no longer exists. It is not mentioned in the title of its sovereign. The English people have no special rights, not even a separate set of official statistics. England retains its separate identity in just two areas: religion – the Church Of England – and sport – cricket, rugby and soccer. England occupies more than half of the United Kingdom's land mass and contains over four fifths of the population. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. And yet Scotland and Wales have both been more successful in securing their own institutions. For example, the BBC has special Scottish and Welsh broadcasting councils, but England has none. So how do we define Englishness? By history, by art, by character? What is the spirit of England, and how can we embody it, empower it?'

Vince didn't like the sound of the last part. He had been digging out old speeches in an effort to uncover something more substantial on Sebastian. He knew virtually nothing about his subject's immediate past and had hoped to unearth details about the Wells family background, but this was not entirely what he had expected to find. Turning to the front of the article, he checked the author's name again. Sebastian Wells, right there in black and white. There was even a moody little photograph that looked as if it had been taken at university.

'England is a compact country. All its destinations are within a day's land travel. Consequently it maintains a national character despite the extraordinary diversity of its people. It is dominated by the vast central city of London, a city older than Christianity itself, but almost completely reinvented in the New Elizabethan age. For the Blitz caused far more destruction than mere damage to bricks and mortar. In 1939, London was still the greatest city in the world. This rich royal capital, so absolutely sure of itself, was changed forever by the incessant rain of bombs. Its traditions were lost, its centuries-old sense of national mission replaced with confusion, loss of civic responsibility, bureaucratic muddle and argument, a state of chaos from which it has never fully recovered. It is no coincidence that the post-war years saw a rise in factors contributing to that chaos: immigration, divorce, motiveless crime.'

Vince knew a little about the so-called New Elizabethans, the first generation of post-war university graduates. The name had never really caught on. Closing the book, he recalled seeing Sebastian's name somewhere else, on another item culled earlier from the Political Science section. The curse of a photographic memory. A glance at the clock confirmed that the library would be closing in fifteen minutes. Just enough time.

He found what he was looking for in the sidebar of an article about political extremism that he had photocopied for his original course essay on London and the class system. Sebastian Wells had been thrown out of Oxford for something referred to as 'Incitement to Hatred', which presumably meant encouraging racism. If that was the case, what on earth was he doing answering Vince's questions?

It was hard to believe that the two people were actually one and the same. In person Sebastian was perfectly reasonable and rational. On paper he was a torch-wielding fanatic. According to the press he was billed as one of the emerging new leaders of the intellectual far right, but his birthright seemed to deny him as much as it offered. As an MP he would have had the power to promote his ideas. As an Honourable destined to adopt his father's title, his only power lay in preventing the ideas of others.

An alarming new picture of Sebastian Wells drew into focus. He had certainly covered the far-right corners of the political waterfront in his brief life. He considered both the Monday Club and the Disraelian Society too liberal and 'wishy-washy'. He advocated forced repatriation, an end to the Health Service, the return of capital punishment, further tax incentives for big business. More sinister motives were hinted at.

Sebastian had not advanced a single extreme opinion in any of their interviews. On the contrary, he had evinced such naive courtesy that it was tempting to avoid the dark areas of his psyche, to enjoy his easy charm, his louche manner, his casually reckless expenditure. Vince was ashamed to admit that it was fun hanging out with someone who wasn't penniless for a change, someone with a car and money to spend. This was what half of him had always wanted: stability, order, respect, social standing. So what if it required making a few moral sacrifices?

He had not even begun his professional career as a writer, and already the question of compromise was slapping him in the face. He decided that Sebastian would have to be told about his misgivings. He would give him a chance to explain, warn him, possibly even stop the interviews. In a way, finding out something like this was exactly what he had hoped for. But he liked the man, for God's sake.

And there was something else. He made photocopies of the articles he had just read and headed towards his apartment, making a mental note to ask Sebastian about a phrase that had cropped up a number of times, his connection to a society known as the League of Prometheus. Instead of confronting him immediately, Vince decided to do some more reading up on the subject of the beliefs and proclamations of the Hon. Sebastian Wells.

'It seems like you're here every day, man,' said the Rastafarian desk clerk as he arrived at Camden Library the following morning.

'Yes, you're right, I have no life,' Vince admitted, shaking out his umbrella and stowing it in a corner. He had stepped on a paving stone that had tilted, soaking his jeans, a typical street-hazard in Tufnell Park. As usual he was the first customer, and would probably be alone until the down-and-outs arrived when they were cleared out from the local hostel. At the battered Apple Mac in the corner of the reference section, he logged onto the Internet and began a subject search for items located under the references Wells, Sebastian and League, Prometheus. The latter organisation had been mentioned most recently in a Guardian article. God knows how much this could cost me, he thought, praying for speed as he checked the loading times and pulled down a couple of text-only articles.