Rule Britannia

Plot

Emma, who lives in Cornwall with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, wakes one morning to find that the world has apparently gone mad: no post, no telephone, no radio, a warship in the bay and American soldiers advancing across the field towards the home. The time is a few years in the future. England has withdrawn from the Common Market and, on the brink of bankruptcy, has decided that salvation lies in a union--political, military and economic--with the United States. Theoretically it is to be an equal partnership; but to some people it soon begins to look like a takeover. Mad (which is Emma's name for her grandmother) certainly views it in this way. She has filled her years of retirement by adopting six young boys, bringing them up with refreshing disrespect for what she regards as useless conventions. From the instant she sees the Americans Mad declares war on these interlopers and gleefully abetted by the boys, puts into operation a programme of resistance which soon paralyses this microcosm of England.