It is 1913 and the world is on the brink of war. Men are beginning to query society's existing order. Yet to the majority of the inhabitants of the estate of Cresswell Manor in Devon, the summer seems endless; why should they not think that life will continue as it always has, ruled by the seasons and the whims of the Cresswell family? But change is afoot. Hannah - the only daughter of the Cresswells - is heavily involved with the suffragettes, whose aims she approves of, but whose methods she abhors. She still dreams of finding love, even after years of disappointment. Emeralda, headstrong and spoiled, deceives her husband for the strangest of reasons. Lettice, married to a brute of a husband, longs for freedom. Young Mortimer Cresswell appals his mother by falling in love with an estate worker's daughter, while his tearaway brother, Felix, breaks her heart in his pursuit of hedonism. The Cresswells are ignorant that war is looming, that society is about to change for ever and that soon the England their forefathers knew will alter beyond their wildest dreams - or fears.