Only a very privileged few — the men and women best able to re-habilitate Britain — were given the chance of survival in special shelters when the Chinese dropped the Bomb. Fewer still survived the blast. Among them was Johnny Clayton, marine engineer, his wife, and the small, weak son to whom she gave birth in the shelter. Shackled still by the chains of the pre-Bomb world, Clayton and family, lone survivors in Portsmouth, set out for London in the hope of finding some sort of headquarters. En route they meet only one man — a naval radio artificer: a hard-drinking, hard-living character. Thus the eternal triangle is ironically completed — in entirely alien circumstances.

Mental strain and physical stress dog their steps. Acceptance of their new existence is continually hampered by their inbred moralities and behaviour codes. Philip McCutchan bites viciously into his theme and leads it unflinchingly on to its bitter but inevitable conclusion.