Winifred Holtby realised that local government is not a dry affair of meetings and memoranda, but the front-line defence thrown up by humanity against its common enemies of sickness, poverty and ignorance. She built her story around six people working for a typical county council. Beneath the lives of the public servants runs the thread of their personal drama. The story tells how a public life affects the private life; and how a man's personal sufferings make him what he is in public. Corruption, intrigue and romance in a Yorkshire setting where country squire whose wife is in a mental hospital becomes attracted to a crusading local schoolmistress.