The second is that Gerald Middleton fell in love with Dollie, Gilbert's fiancée, and had an affair with her when his friend went off to fight in World War I.

Kay has an unhappy marriage and a deeply embittered view of her father, whom she appears to blame for everything that has gone wrong in her life, including her withered hand (which was actually caused by her mother).

Gerald's estranged wife, Inge, is a grotesquely deluded woman who cannot bring herself to acknowledge her younger son John's homosexuality or her daughter's physical disability.

The theme of the novel was suggested to Wilson by archaeological disputes, notably the Piltdown Man hoax (1908–1912) and an accusation that the Elgin Marbles had been mishandled by the British Museum, later substantiated.

That discovery, essentially a pagan style of burial in which Christian artefacts were included, raised many disputes among academics (as Angus Wilson knew).

Tara Fitzgerald played a major supporting role as the young Dollie and there were appearances by a 16-year-old Kate Winslet, and by Daniel Craig as Gilbert.

"Anglo-Saxon attitudes" is a phrase originated by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass (1871): Wilson uses part of this quotation at the front of his novel.

History Today titled its report of the opening of a new museum at Canterbury in Kent, on the site of St Augustine's Abbey, "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes".