The story of two half-brothers, Jason and Michael, who travel between Iceland and the Isle of Man experiencing political revolutions, natural disasters, and personal upheavals. The plot is loosely based on the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau.
An orphan named Innocence leaves her county home after her foster-father dies. She travels to the city and makes a living as a novelist. Subsequently, she has an affair with a painter named Amadis de Jocelyn, who later dumps her.
The film is set in the fictional mill town of Hindle in Lancashire in England, and concerns two young persons, Fanny Hawthorn and Alan Jeffcote, who are discovered to have been having what would now be called a "dirty weekend" during their holiday, during the town's wakes week.
