1929, and Donald Kirkwood's Zululand cotton farm is abandoned. The family moves to Chelmsford, a clifftop house on the northern outskirts of Durban. Afrikaner right-wingers plot pro-Nazi support as Hitler continues his rise to power during the 1930s. In Durban, society is more concerned with horse racing and doing good works among marginalised Zulus and Indians. When war breaks out in Europe and north-east Africa, Donald Kirkwood's son Ewan enlists and is exposed to the full horrors of war. He joins the Springbok Legion in Addis Ababa, a fraternity for all servicemen to help those in need. Later, his romance across the colour-bar with a beautiful Indian girl leads to disaster. The novel is rich with characters - Keswick Jardine, the harbourmaster, who opens the French doors of his house with a system of levers linked to a ship's wheel in the sitting room; Jeeves, the Jardines' Indian butler, who chuckles away in his rooms at night, reading books by P G Wodehouse; and the pretty half-caste bar girl Rosa in Lourenco Marques who helps Malcolm Muggeridge disable the Italian consul, described by spy Kim Philby as "the most dangerous man in Africa".

This novel completes the Kirkwood family trilogy set in a troubled South Africa and 'bookended' by two world wars.