In 1796 the promising young poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge came with his attractive wife Sara to live at nether Stowey in West Somerset, drawn by the beauty of the Quantock Hills and by his new friendship with Tom Poole, who owned a tannery business in Castle Street.
Little did Tom realise then how closely he was to become involved, during the years 1796 to 1804, with Coleridge's brilliant, colourful and ultimately tragic life - with his fiercely democratic literary friends who descended on Stowey from time to time and shocked the locals: with his eccentric style of living, with his stormy marriage and hopeless love affair and with his agonised struggle to write great poetry. Overshadowing all, Tom had to watch Coleridge's gradual descent into the abyss of opium addiction