This play is about a idealistic young man, Michael Brown, who returns home to London from his wartime schooling in Canada to find that his widowed mother Olivia has become the mistress of a leading Tory cabinet member, Sir John Fletcher - a man who represents the antithesis of everything Michael believes. The play brings into sharp ideological conflict the values of the pre-war and the post-war world, with an emphasis on their material and economic underpinnings. It was first produced at the Lyric Theatre, London, on 20 December 1944.