A modern-day retelling of Arnold Bennett's novel, in which a Treasury official with a reputation for fiscal prudence is left a great deal of money and has no idea how to cope with sudden personal wealth.
During a charity football match between Arsenal and touring amateur side Trojans, the Trojan's new star player collapses and dies. Inspector Slade of Scotland Yard is called in and declares it was murder. It takes all his ingenuity and another death before the motive is discovered and the killer revealed.
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. Our 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. A country squire whose wife is in a mental hospital becomes attracted to a crusading local schoolmistress.
A popular opera singer falls in love with a gangly farm boy. Anton's father is left all alone when his son runs off to the Big City with Ilona. Things really get sticky when Albert becomes obsessed with the notion that Ilona is actually his own illegitimate daughter!
