[2] When Ben's cousins, whom he lives with, are unwell, he is forced to spend the summer with his father and stepmother-to-be.

He walks along the walls connecting all the houses until he comes to one covered in jagged glass.

Ben then falls into the garden and meets Thomas, a young boy from Tiga, who is being kept in London, while his father, Chief Okapi, is exiled there.

[4] Nina Bawden remarked she intended "to write about children actually escaping — even though temporarily – from the world of grownups".

[2] “Children's Literature Review” states that the book sometimes suffers “slightly through being too full of incident” [5]