The series follows his life and career from humble beginnings in an English provincial town, to reasonably successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement.
Time of Hope and George Passant depict the price paid by clever, poor young men to escape their provincial origins.
Snow analyses the professional world, scrutinising microscopic shifts of power within the enclosed settings of a Cambridge college, a Whitehall ministry, a law firm.
For example, in the novels set in the Cambridge college (a thinly veiled Christ's), a small, disparate group of men is typically required to reach a collective decision on an important subject.
The BBC later adapted the books as a 10-episode Radio 4 Classic Serial, first broadcast in 2003, which starred Adam Godley (ep.1-5) then David Haig (ep.6-10) as Lewis, Anastasia Hille as Sheila and Juliet Aubrey as Margaret.