On 20 July l944 Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped death when an assassin's bomb failed to kill him in his Eastern command, the Wolf's Lair. The conspirators were hunted down and hanged from meat-hooks, and their executions were filmed. Among them was Axel von Gottberg. Sixty years after his death, von Gottberg's close friend and now a legendary Oxford professor, Elya Mendel, leaves a legacy of papers and letters to a former student, Conrad Senior. Senior...

Using historical facts and documentary references, Marie Ferranti takes us through the backdoor of everyday 15th century life into a world populated by some of the greatest men and artists of the age, at the end of which we find ourselves the victim of a very sophisticated 'trompe l'oeil'.