The novel tells the story of a diffident member of the British Civil Service, Jasper Pye, who is sent to East Anglia to close a government department headquartered at a country estate.

The setting is loosely based on the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway between Haughley and Laxfield, which closed in 1952, the year Hadfield moved to Suffolk.

It was adapted for a 1994 BBC television series, Love on a Branch Line, starring Michael Maloney as Jasper Pye and Leslie Phillips as Lord Flamborough.

Jasper Pye, a civil servant for nine years in an unnamed ministry, takes the Piccadilly line from Barons Court to Green Park.

Whilst on the train, he recounts a party in Chelsea he attended the previous evening, where he overheard the woman he had been pursuing, Dierdre, say "yes I know; Jasper is a bore."

After exiting the tube, Pye walks to his office to meet his boss, Mark Fairweather, and announces his intention to resign.

The unit, called the "Department of Output Statistics," is located on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk in a country house, Arcady Hall, owned by the Earl of Flamborough.

The unit had been established in 1940 during the Battle of Britain when the ministry requisitioned the Earl's house, and has largely been ignored since the War.

After the pub closes, Pye visits the village church and then goes to see Arcady Hall from the outside, before retiring to the Virley Arms for the night.

At the hall, Pye then meets the department's staff: Professor Duncan McAllister Pollux, the archivist Quirk, and secretary Miss Mounsey, nicknamed "the Mouse."

After tea, Quirk recruits Pye for the next day's cricket match between Arcady and Flaxfield, and they go to hit at a practice field.

Following dinner, Pye goes with the professor to Lord Flamborough's railway carriage, where a group plans the programme for Monday's Fête in aid of the Fund for Fallen Women.

The Professor shows Pye to Sir Almeric's room, where they find a longbow that was on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, but that went missing.

After breakfast, Pye helps Lady Flamborough and the Professor with the garden, and then takes a trip to the Virley Arms with Jones.

The morning of Whit Monday Pye breakfasts with the Professor, Quirk, and the Mouse where they talk about the coming events of the day.

In the letter, Fairweather explains that on Friday afternoon, the treasury announced its snap decision to close Output Statistics without receiving Pye's report.

While Lord Flamborough and the hired band listen to music in the carriage, Pye helps Chloe drive the train to Arcady.

In The Times, a reviewer called the novel "light, fantastic, and amusing," and said "its plot might have been used as a script for one of the earlier Ealing film comedies.