Overview: England, 1948 to 1950. The nation as a whole is picking itself up, dusting itself off and starting all over again, rebuilding businesses, relationships and the political make-up of the country as a whole. Labour is in power, with plans to nationalise key industries including the ironworks belonging to the wealthy Warrington family. For the working-class Haywards, old class barriers are slowly disintegrating as they try to find their place in the new order of things. For Ros Warrington, there's the question of her Catholicism and love for a man who cannot share her faith. That man, Blake Hayward, faces challenges of his own with the arrival from Berlin of his illegitimate child. Keir Hayward, a steely-hearted communist, finds that heart melting in the hands of a married woman. And what dark and dislocating plan does the newly arrived Richard Warrington have that will affect them all?