‘Bad Relations’ tells the story of a family fractured by history, geography and desire. On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William’s experience of war is to bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William’s English descendants invite Stephen, a distant Australian cousin, to stay in their bohemian house in Cornwall – but their golden summer entanglements will end in a dramatic fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family culminates in a terrible reckoning.