Any war is made up of a horde of personal tragedies--but the greater picture is the tragedy of the death of a way of life. For a way of life--good, bad, or indifferent--exists because it is dearly loved....
Take a board with 64 squares on it. Put a grain of wheat on the first square--two on the second--four on the third. Keep doubling in this manner and you will find there isn't enough wheat in the world to fill the sixty-fourth square. It can be the same with compound interest.
After some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first part, The Relapse into Barbarism, is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilisation and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England. The second part, Wild England, is an adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society.