Attack in the dark, screams, blazing huts; the Boxer rebellion reaches Theodore's once peaceful mission settlement in remote China. Theodore makes a dangerous and exciting escape and finds himself in a mysterious gold-domed monastery high in the Tibetan mountains. Although he does manage to escape, his father lies dead and the life he has known is in ruins.

Peter Dickinson was born in 1927 in Zambia, within earshot of the Victoria Falls. Baboons sometimes came into the school playground. His family returned to England so that he and his brothers could go to school at Eton College and then Cambridge University. He was taught mostly Latin and Greek and didn't have an English lesson after he was twelve.

He and his first wife had two daughters and two sons, and he now has six grandchildren. He and his second wife, the American writer Robin McKinley, live in a pretty country town in the south of England. He says "I am strongly against the religion of art, and the priesthood of artists. I am a cobbler. Given good leather I can make a comfortable shoe."