Born in Canada, McCrae served in the South African War before carving out a career as an eminent doctor. It was during the Great War, while serving in 1915 as both an artillery and medical officer in the Second Battle of Ypres, that he wrote his famous poem In Flanders Fields, that was inspirational in the adoption of the poppy as the symbol of remembrance.

Set against a background of nearly half a century of history, Dianne Graves brings alive in fascinating detail John McCrae and his world; some of the people he knew and met among them Rudyard Kipling, Leo Amery, Sir Alexander Fleming, and Stephen Leacock, the threads that linked their lives; and the story of four people who, after the war, were instrumental in the events that led to poppies being manufactured and sold to raise funds.