Academic Licence — Peter Smith

It's a new academic year at The Defence University of Technology and Management located in rural Oxfordshire. The Provost, Professor James Nightingale is determined to advance his career and is busy promoting his case to head the UK's Funding Council. The head of the Civil and Military Engineering Department, Professor Frank Hargreaves, is hoping to succeed Nightingale. Both are hoping that Dr Stephen Wright's lucrative contract with an international armour company will enhance their prospects. Final contract negotiations are nearing completion when Stephen Wright's art gallery-owning partner runs into significant financial difficulties and Stephen faces temptation from an unlikely source. An untimely death, tangled academic and personal ambitions and increasingly convoluted contacts with overseas universities, research establishments and commercial organisations combine to produce a situation that requires a certain academic licence to resolve.