Beginning in the Sudan and London of 1884 and played out against the shambolic end of the Empire, an Honourable Man draws on the lives of two real men: Charles Gordon, a heroic, hubristic, career army man whose refusal to obey orders helped bring down the Gladstone government, and W T Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, the father of tabloid journalism. Their story is intercut with the tale of a poor, working woman in London.