East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Formidable local matriarch, Agatha Kent, has just risked her reputation by publicly pushing for the appointment of a female Latin teacher but when Beatrice Nash arrives, with one trunk and several large crates of books, she is not as old or as meek as expected. As Beatrice navigates the strictures of small town life, an unimaginable war looms. The true limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.