"Ardent patriot Richard Hannay is given his most trying task yet: passing himself off as a pacifist in order to infiltrate the anti-war league. His aim is to discover an unimpeachable German spy, 'a man whose brain never sleeps', thus sabing Britain from its enemy in the crucial early days of the First World War. He begins his undercover work in the Cotswolds, posing as Cornelius Brand, but his search takes him on to the Highlands of Scotland and the bloody battlefields of France where, in his own identity, he sees his efforts and sacrifices - and those of his comrades - come to fruition."