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 a country squire whose wife is in a mental hospital becomes attracted to a crusading local schoolmistress.—Michael Crew <[email protected]>

Robert Carne is a Yorkshire country squire who is almost bankrupt from keeping his mentally ill wife in an expensive sanitarium for many years, where she has every possible comfort. He is trying to give his young daughter, Madge, an education, but is forced to send her to local public school where Sarah Burton has just been named headmistress. Two schemers have a plan to do away with the slum section and build model homes on the site, this site being controlled by one of them, a sanctimonious hypocrite named Alfred Huggins. Their plan brings the gradual drawing closer together of Robert and Sarah who, at first, were antagonistic. She is instrumental in saving his estate and exposing the schemers at the local town council meeting. The death of the invalid wife clears the way for a budding romance.—Les Adams <[email protected]>