'Magenta' Herdwick strives, as a teacher, to enliven his multi-ethnic classes against the egalitarian theory of socialist education current at the time. He lives with his forsaken mother as his father never came home from his last posting abroad.

Herdwick suffers the sexual deprivation of a normal bloke, but with a conscience of sin and temptation from his Catholic upbringing. Temptation, alas, fails. He teams up with a fellow teacher, old Mr. Elsan, an expert photographer of nudes, and develops contacts with a private girls' school with all its temptations. He becomes involved with local politics and the competition to establish a polytechnic. Meanwhile he needs to extricate himself from his liaison with the headmistress of the girls' school in preference for one of her senior pupils, the delicious and naughty Miranda.

And then his father reappears on the scene. With so many complications will all end well?