Chronicles a half century of British upper-class life through the eyes of Nicholas Jenkins, from the 1920s to the 1960s. See how friendship, adultery, ambition, and failure play out in London's social, political, and artistic scenes.

Arrogant, irascible, and misogynistic professor of phonetics Henry Higgins believes that the accent and tone of one's voice determines a person's prospects in society. He boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Hugh Pickering--also an expert in phonetics--that he could teach any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. He chooses as an example a sassy, young working-class London flower seller from the...