[1] It was published in January 1928 in the UK by Duckworth, and in the US under the title The Last Post by Albert and Charles Boni, and also the Literary Guild of America.

The second part of the novel concentrates on the threats to the occupants of the cottage and their way of life that is presented by the intrusion of Christopher's estranged wife Sylvia, their son, the American tenant that has moved into Groby, the Tietjens family's ancestral home, and others.

Others tensions arise from the pregnant Valentine's painful awareness of her unmarried status and the precarious financial state in which she and Christopher are placed.

Christopher has flown to York in an attempt to avert this threat and is thus largely absent from the action of the novel yet constantly present in the minds of the other characters.

By means of their varied and sometimes contradictory views of him, the novel offers a complex picture of the ‘reconstructed’, post-war man, who must negotiate this hazardous terrain of ‘peacetime’.