An impoverished family are evicted from their country smallholding. They agree to go their separate ways for five years, then to meet again to reassess their fortunes. Swankiller, the thrusting eldest son, decides to try his luck in the big city. Homeless, jobless, penniless and eventually alone, he discovers the brutal undertow beneath the city's varied and beguiling surface.

Steeped in the atmospere and folklore of Suffolk coastal towns, Swankiller describes a man's search for identity and happiness in a fallen world. A genuinely epic play, it was performed with a cast of fifty at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh in 1996.