[2] Cautious and monosyllabic, he is described by Waugh as "a praiser of the past and a lover of exact scholarship", and is characterized as representing the old-fashioned virtues of honesty, decency, sanity, and, ultimately, heroism.

[3][4][6] At the same time as the Bellorius Tercentenary, Neutralia is hosting several other events, including a large philatelic conference and an international gathering of women athletes, and in Simona Scott-King meets a variety of remarkable characters.

One of these, a scholar from Switzerland, is murdered, and Scott-King is tricked into laying a wreath for a questionable hero and unveiling a statue which is not what it seems, causing him to flee Simona disguised as a nun.

After a long sea journey, he arrives without his passport at a camp for Jewish illegal immigrants in the British Mandate for Palestine, where he is treated with suspicion until he is recognized by an old boy of his school and is thus able to establish his true identity.

"[8] Waugh gathered most of his material for Scott-King's Modern Europe from a trip he made to Franco's Spain in the summer of 1946 with Douglas Woodruff, editor of The Tablet, to attend events marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Francisco de Vitoria, claimed by some as the father of international law.