The novel's setting is the slightly worn-at-the-heels office of The Outsider, an influential journal of opinion with a small but dwindling circulation. The magazine and its staff have been dominated by the personality of editor-in-chief Gilbert Twining ever since that unorthodox "genius" of British journalism was imported a decade ago. But when a sudden illness sends Twining into enforced retirement, the underground struggle among his editors to supplant him surfaces.