The title of the novel is derived from a quote by Polonius in William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 3): "This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.

"[1] Spending leave together on the South Coast during the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the blitz, Clive and Prudence have an affair.

Having survived Dunkirk, but having a crisis of conscience over what the war is being fought for and disgusted at the incompetence of the ruling elite, Clive decides not to return to the Army and to go absent without leave.

"[2] The novel has been adapted to a movie of the same name in 1942 directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine.

This article about a World War II novel first published in the 1940s is a stub.