Fearne Cotton is intrigued by her Welsh great-grandfather Evan Meredith who, despite working down a coal mine from the age of 13, ended up as a chemist in the home counties. Evan never talked about what he did during World War I, and Fearne decides to investigate. She is shocked to discover that Evan risked both his freedom and his reputation by following his conscience, caught up in a catch-22 situation with the authorities which was only broken when Evan took dramatic action.

On her mother's side, Fearne finds an ancestor whose extraordinary professional ambition led to an encounter with Queen Victoria but ended in career disaster.