Portrait of Elmbury, Brensham Village, and The Blue Field are properly regarded as a trilogy. Written betwen 1945 and 1948, they all deal with the same part of England - the old town of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and its surrounding villages - at a time of deliberate political change, and were hailed immediately as authentic pictures of English small-town rural life. The trilogy also contains the germs of what have become burning issues: pollution, conservation, education, and unemployment.