Retired bank manager Henry Pulling, having spent his life in a dull suburb, becomes involved in an exciting new lifestyle after he meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in fifty years and is persuaded to accompany her on a tour of Europe.

Two romances about Rudolph Rassendyll, an English gentleman in a foreign land. In the first, he masquerades as his cousin the King to save Ruritania from vicious Black Michel; and in the second, he returns to Ruritania to try to prevent Rupert of Hentzau from delivering a letter that compromises the queen.