After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the agingDr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter inEngland. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled Frencharistocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant Englishlawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From thetranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to thevengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign ofTerror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.