 The true story of successful and respectable Edwardian businessman Roger Ackerley s struggle to conceal the existence of his secret lover and three teenage daughters from his society wife and remaining children. Known to them only as "Uncle Bodger", the daughters remained unaware he was their father until after his death. Initially abandoned by their mother and maintained nearby in relative poverty by Ackerley, the film also explores the impact of her sudden return and the social ironies of his then closet homosexual son, Joe simultaneously struggling to unburden his truth onto his reluctant, outwardly respectable father. Joe became the eminent author J R Ackerley on whose book, My Father And Myself, the film is partially based, along with The Secret Orchard Of Roger Ackerley by Diana Petre, one of his "illegitimate" daughters.