Self-centred, obsessed with his work, and oblivious to much of what goes on around him, he deals with his colleagues’ lack of understanding and sympathy by surrounding himself with young female Recorded Programme Assistants (RPAs) with whom he shares his complaints and worries.

[2][3] Writing in the Library Journal in 1999, Starr E. Smith said that Fitzgerald, drawing on her own youthful employment at the BBC, "brings time, place, and characters to life in a book remarkable for its dexterous and appealing prose".

Wolfe noted that the book delivered what readers had come to expect: “a well-crafted plot with sensitive emotional understanding, prose graced by shining moments, intimacy and immediacy, and engaging people who are trying to sort out their lives in the teeth of disaster”.

[5] Hermione Lee, Fitzgerald's biographer, noted that although the novel at first appears to be a light, funny, brilliantly accurate recreation of the BBC in wartime, there is also danger and anguish, a strong idea about truth, and a sad affectionate remembering of the author's younger self.

[6] In his introduction to the 2014 paperback edition of the novel, Mark Damazer noted that while Fitzgerald may only have been in her mid-20s when she worked for the BBC, she palpably understood its “profound, fussy, and sometimes vain but largely heroic and invaluable commitment to the truth – and expressed it in the form of a concise, witty and beautiful novel".