A stranger calls at a London house sometime after World War Two and tells an intriguing tale of ancestral execution, betrayal and lost titles. This sets in motion a search that leads to a lost ancestor, Colonel Thomas Brereton, who was found to have been hounded to an untimely death. This book charts for the first time not only the Colonel's origins and his meritorious rise in the military during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, but also his life after the wars had ceased, when many feared that revolution had arrived in Britain itself. For in 1831 a shocked ruling class tried to hold on to power while denying political reform, but the ensuing descent into anarchy resulted in unparalleled destruction, culminating in Bristol and the suicide of the Colonel. But was he really the one to blame? Or has history wrongly condemned an innocent man for political expediency.