Hilary Fletcher is the son of the vicar of Lasterby, a village in North Yorkshire; his uncle, his mother’s brother, is a farmer, the tenant of Sir Edward Metherall who lives at Lasterby Hall. Hilary is taken up by the Metheralls as a playmate for their children, Mark and Harriet. He is captivated by the upper-class Metheralls, and aspires to become part of their world, but as he enters into adulthood he is rebuffed and a finally humiliated at a Hunt Ball.

Josef Birek, a young dissident writer, escapes from Communist Czechoslovakia to the West. Birek already has a reputation: his work, smuggled into England, has been published by the Comenius Foundation in London, translated Laura Morton, the wife of a banker, who had studied Czech at Oxford University. When Birek comes to London, Laura helps him find his feet, introduces him into her circle of fashionable friends and he becomes her lover. At first Birek is lionised but soon discovers that there is a down-side to life in the free world.