Three friends, Daniel, Ruth and Arthur, have survived the Second World War and are determined, in their different ways, to play a part in preventing such a catastrophe from ever happening again. Almost by accident Arthur wins a seat in Parliament in the 1945 General Election. To Daniel's great satisfaction the Army assigns him a job preparing for the peace-keeping role of the new United Nations Organization. Ruth has an idea for a novel that will remind people of a different Germany that existed before the years of the Kaiser and Hitler. Daniel and Ruth also have unfinished business from 1939, when they had postponed their plans to marry; and each is uncertain about whether to reveal a wartime secret to the other. Arthur is impatient to start a family. However, as in the years before 1939, it is public events in distant places that determine how their private lives develop; and the action moves between London, New York, Switzerland and Paris in ways that they couldn't have predicted.