A perceptive and potent glimpse of youth in Edwardian England, reveling in the naivety and bluster of a young boy, on the fledgling cusp of adulthood and responsibility Life has been kind to Roderick Brannan in his first 14 years, and in the autumn of 1906 there is nothing he wants more than to make a sporting name for himself at school. But with the breeze of the shifting seasons comes an imperceptible breath of change, for England, and for Roderick, and when his father, a car manufacturer, dies he must return to the family home. There follows a tumultuous summer, for Roderick and his young cousin, Dorothea. Swapping the strictures of boarding school for the cloistered quiet of a remote country house leads Roderick to reassess his goals, and awakens in him desires he had never considred possible.