Victorian England's most famous eccentric, the Duke of Portland was renowned for both his enormous wealth and for the elaborate series of tunnels he had built beneath his massive estate. The Duke, who is a fountain of nineteenth-century knowledge and curiosity, faithfully records in his journal the events that make up his days. His research extends into the fields of chiropractic medicine, and the study of auras, archaeology, and phrenology in a series of hilarious episodes that echo the New Age exploits of our own era while revealing the Duke to be a true naif: wonderfully humane, painfully shy, and untouched by the power his great wealth affords him.

As the Duke's enthusiasms gradually turn inward to the working of the mind and memory, he slowly slips into madness. The natural end of his journey of self-discovery gives The Underground Man its horrifying and unforgettable climax. A brilliant comic and tragic creation, Mick Jackson's Duke of Portland is one of the most memorable and heartbreaking characters to emerge from recent fiction.

"A marvelous study of human foibles". -- The New York Times Book Review

"Ingenious ... Jackson's portrait, through the Duke's eyes, of an age poised between credulity and science is shrewd and fascinating". -- Kirkus Reviews