University London Central, a “middling” university, finds itself in a scandalous mess.  “Special measures” require the wholesale removal of its administration. The new vice-chancellor, Professor Clifford Conquest, is a seasoned public sector “enforcer”; a dedicated organisation man facing multiple challenges. His greatest is a chance encounter with a beautiful pole dancer, Juliette Burton.  He is unable to shake off his obsession with her. She is, as misfortune would have it, a student of his university. His conflicting impulses – to manage his university judiciously and further his erotic imaginings – put him in danger of becoming the target of the very machinery of academic disciplining he has set in motion. Schemes designed to rectify the ills of the university begin to crumble: inept academics defy his attempts to discredit them, an insurrection of Chinese students turns ugly and a symbolic dismemberment threatens his career. 

At the centre of this whirlwind is the self-possessed Juliette, tantalisingly out of reach. Can Conquest continue his rise to greater things? Or will the enemies of moral turpitude gathering in the darker corners of the senior common room destroy him? Surely, even a man driven by ambition and a belief in his inevitable rise to the very top, must have his sensual self… however foolish it might make him seem?