Conscientious objector Bill Rowe does not want to kill Hitler's conscripts but he finds his courage deserting him in a bleak jail patrolled by indifferent guards and hungry bugs.

Frail and disillusioned, Bill Rowe languishes in a prison cell. As the Luftwaffe pass overhead, he relives his journey from a basement in Gateshead to a tribunal in London tasked with examining and judging that most private and intimate of things: conscience. But will he die a coward or will he find the strength to confront his past?