George Woolfe is a young working class East London printmaker in 1900. Frustrated by the constraints of his class and station, he sees an opportunity to escape when, by chance, he meets Charles Booth, author of one of the most comprehensive social surveys of London ever undertaken. But this apparently auspicious encounter has tragic consequences for George who, within six months, is charged with the murder of a young woman. But did he do it?

Set at the dawning of a new century, when the rigid class and gender boundaries of the Victorian age were soon to shift and realign, Birdcage Walk is a historical novel that vividly brings to life a real-life Edwardian murder and the possible miscarriage of justice that followed it.