The novel takes place "in the autumn before the outbreak of what used to be known as the Great War," in Nettleby Park, which "was very large in those days, nearly a thousand acres (an eighth of the whole estate)," all of it the property of Sir Randolph, a gentleman of conservative leanings who laments the coming of a new age of "striking industrial workers, screaming suffragettes, Irish terrorists, scandals on the Stock Exchange, universal suffrage."

It outrages him that "the politicians are determined to turn this country into an urban society instead of a rural one" and to "take away the power of the landed proprietor."

He may seem at first a caricature of the British upper class, but he is simply a man of another time, a paternalistic patrician who believes it his duty to care for the men and women who work on his farm.

and summarized; "From start to finish, then, there's far too little real characterization and far too much prototyping here—as Colegate's metaphor-essay approach scrambles to include every 1913 issue, from Ireland and the failure of romanticism to budding feminism and the ""bigger shooting party"" that is war.

Still, it's all done with grace, well-crafted vignettes, and a strong (if studied) Chekhovian feel for people-against-landscape—so readers more disposed to mood than storytelling will find this an evocative and elegantly restrained replay of Shaw's Heartbreak House milieu.