It is late February 1913, and in London five men are planning a ballet. They meet in various grand hotels close to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, where Sergei Diaghilev's company, the Ballets Russes, is mounting a season. Two men out of the five, Diaghilev himself and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, are staying at the Savoy. A third, the German Count Harry Kessler, patron of avant-garde artists and engineer of collaborations between them, is at the Cecil. The other two planners have deeper London roots. The theatre artist Edward Gordon Craig, though he has been based in Italy for the last seven years, visits London quite often and is currently in town in connection with a School for the Art of the Theatre he wants to set up, while the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams actually lives all the year round in Chelsea. Between 17 and 27 February, the five men meet twice as a plenary quintet and several times in smaller groups; and it is the final meeting at the Carlton Hotel, with Diaghilev, Kessler, Craig and Vaughan Williams taking a late supper together, that is the crucial one.