Best selling historian Peter Ackroyd tells the story of the modern imagination, through the poets and novelists who pioneered an alternative way of living. Inspired by the French Revolution and the American Civil War, artists such as Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley replaced the rule of God, Church and Monarchy with the emotion, philosophy and intellect of the individual. Each strove for mental freedom from what William Blake called the "mind forged manacles" of society and authority.