Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself in Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose six-inch height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous.

His subsequent encounters - with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms and brutish Yahoos - give Gulliver new, bitter insights into human behaviour.