When Rebecca Sheldon married George Ludbury, she found herself at war with his grotesquely funny family as well as with the hypocrisy of the Edwardian society in which she lived. The Ludburys -- an affluent Midlands farming clan -- were snobbish, possessive, malicious, and in the case of Pip, downright mad. The matriarchal Mrs. Harold Ludbury was enraged when George -- for whom she had planned better things -- insisted on marrying Rebecca, dismissed by Mrs. Ludbury as a 'shop girl'. From that moment on the family did their best to wreck the marriage, win George back to the family farm, and alienate Rebecca's children from her. It took thirty years of gentle compliance and evasive pleasantness before Rebecca won her private war and achieved exactly what she wanted.