The story's protagonist, Laurie (Laurence) 'Spud' Odell, is a young soldier wounded at Dunkirk who must decide if his affections lie with a younger conscientious objector working at his hospital or a naval officer whom he had 'worshiped' when they had both been pupils at an all-boys boarding school and with whom he has suddenly been reconnected.

[2] Renault is concerned that homosexual men be fully integrated members of society and do not try to exist in a ghetto of their own making, as exemplified by the party ("part-brothel, part lonely hearts club")[3] at which Ralph and Laurie are reunited.

In Ralph, Renault creates a tarnished hero with the potential to be a noble warrior (she alludes to Plato's Symposium, in which a character philosophizes about an army composed of male lovers), whom Laurie, who has not yet lost his youthful idealism, can redeem.

[4] The story's wartime setting enabled Renault to consider issues such as how gay men could be valued and useful members of society, to 'make out as a human being'[5] as she expresses it, whilst still remaining true to their nature.

David Sweetman, Renault's biographer, notes that some reviewers linked the book to the growing movement for reform of the laws against homosexuality in Britain and 'even drew the support of the Church of England's official newspaper'.