At High Table in an Oxford College, the pretty, young tutor, Clare Bayes attracted all eyes, not least to her fetching decolletage. No one's eyes were sharper, however, than those of the visiting Spanish lecturer, invited as a guest on this occasion. In due course, the two young people were lovers, unbeknown to Clare's husband, Andif the spaniard was at pains to cover their tracks, his beloved left evidence of adultery with gay abandon - and all this in a university that was a forcing house of gossip and intrigue, a place where 'at every word a reputation dies'. This affair between the canny Latin and the flightly English woman forms the central thread in a brilliantly-wrought tapestry of Oxford life, at once affectionate in its insight and hilarious in its ironic portrayals of Senior Common Room worthies.