The facsimile documents illustrate the intensely held views of leading academics as they wrestled with the question of whether considerations of pure scholarship could remain aloof from a revelation of political treachery. Also revealed is one faction's plot to stir up a public row through the national press - a tactic that was ultimately successful in achieving Blunt's resignation from the Academy.

Historian and current President of the British Academy, David Cannadine, provides the background to the Blunt story, and portrays some of the main characters: Kenneth Dover, the President at the time who struggled to steer the Academy through the crisis; the historian J.H. Plumb, who led the vicious campaign to see Blunt expelled; and A.J.P. Taylor, who was equally determined that the Academy should be willing to 'tolerate the intolerable'.