Sensitive, yet to be discovered novelist James Sancroft, lives a frugal hand-to-mouth existence on a run down boat on the river Thames in London. His efforts to publish his first book, a compelling romantic novel called "Lights Over London", based on the true life of Seventeenth Century fine artist, Garmaine Kirkdale, have proved fruitless. Sancroft's story follows the fortunes of the enigmatic Kirkdale as he leaves his remote hamlet in Somerset and heads to London to seek fame as an Artist. While doing finishing touches to his paintings, the night before the opening of his first exhibition, Kirkdale is tragically disfigured in the Great Fire of London, forcing him to seek a living as part of London's Underworld.

Sancroft's fortunes change after a chance encounter with a Hollywood Producer who decides to buy the rights to his story with a view to turning it into a film. As production begins and the film makers re-envision the world of Seventeenth Century London, in a lavish but crude adaptation, the hidden past of Kirkdale exerts a bewitching influence over Sancroft as past and present dramatically collide. But could the Writer and Producer's efforts to raise the talented artist out of his long obscurity, lead to the solving of a centuries old riddle concerning the

re-discovery of the Crown Jewels of King John, mysteriously lost some 400 years before the Great Fire itself.