Mildred Amberley - suffocating in affluent Leinster Terrace - doomed at 28 to be an old maid. Lizah 'Kid' Harris - a Jewish boxer from London's East End - living from one fight to the next. Worlds apart..But one rainy night Mildred takes a cab across London into Lizah's world - a world of drama, excitement and teeming life. But if she has escaped Leinster Terrace, Mildred can't get away from its values..And Lizah's family exerts pressures of its own. The past will tear them apart..Yet out of all this conflict comes Poppy - with her mother's strong will and her father's boundless appetite for life. Poppy, whose first memories are of Queen Victoria's jubilee, who will live through two world wars, and witness a century of change.