This is a whimsical episodic novel. Mr. Edgar Finchley, unmarried solicitor's clerk aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He books a hotel in Margate but, before he sets off, is asked to keep an eye on a luxury car. He gets into it, goes to sleep on the back seat, and wakes up to find it has been stolen and is being chased by the police. The thief, Wally Beck, outruns the police and holds Mr. Finchley overnight in a house, from which the next day he is released by Beck's girlfriend, Jane Myers. This is the first of about twenty unrelated encounters which take Mr Finchley gradually westward through Bristol, Blagdon Lake, Glastonbury, Taunton, Exeter and Dartmoor to Land's End, Plymouth and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

There was also an American edition in 1935 under the title Mr. Finchley's Holiday.