Spanning forty-five years, these three novels centred on the Devonshire Cresswell family, trace their changing fortunes and those of two families close to them, from the end of the Victorian era to the beginning of the Second World War. The aristocratic Cresswells have owned one of Devon's great country estates for over four hundred years. But as Mortimer Cresswell grows old, the family starts to break apart - consumed by private ambition, rivalry and bitter feuding. Inward looking, they are ill prepared for the great social and economic changes that await them. The Topshams have willingly served the Cresswells for generations, making the families close - but never equal. With the arrival of Ferdie van Struthers, a self-made man of fortune, the natural order of things changes. The rise of the nouveaux riches will affect both master and servant, and the Great War and its aftermath will ensure that the world will never again be as it was in the Edwardian age, a golden afternoon - so long as you were upper class and rich ...