The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was made up of seven precocious, talented and astonishingly forward-thinking young men who changed the face of 19th-century art and artistic society. They included in their number a Beethoven-style child genius; a romantic Italian obsessed with a long-dead medieval poet; a fervent traveller who spent years in obscure areas of the Middle East and whose fervour for painting by moonlight led his neighbours to believe him insane; and a young man who staked everything he had on the Australian goldrush. Their lives were as extraordinary as their art and the circle in which they moved makes for a truly exciting story.