Wells had a keen interest in the political and social issues of his day, one of the most significant of which was the outbreak of the First World War. This book, written in 1916, presents the story of Mr Britling, a political commentator, living in comfortable security in his country estate at Matchings Easy, in Essex. He entertains a varied assembly of guests, including Mr Direck, an American journalist, and Herr Heinrich, a German philology student who acts as a family tutor, and the general atmosphere is a hectic social whirl, involving wild games of hockey, extravagant dinners, and florid conversation. This avoidant conviviality is shattered by the military adventurism of Germany and Austria, and the resultant involvement of other countries on the European continent in a world war. Even though Mr Britling remains in England, the war has major ramifications on his family and friends, and his view of the world.

In the middle of the book, Wells presents his own succinct summary of the action: "This story is essentially the history of the opening and of the realization of the Great War as it happened to one small group of people in Essex, and more particularly as it happened to one human brain. It came at first to all these people in a spectacular manner, as a thing happening dramatically and internationally, as a show, as something in the newspapers, something in the character of an historical epoch rather than a personal experience; only by slow degrees did it and its consequences invade the common texture of English life. If this story could be represented by sketches or pictures the central figure would be Mr. Britling."