 The first three volumes are set in the 1920s and follow the main characters through school , university and their first steps towards social and professional acceptance . The next three are placed in the 1930s ; the protagonists become established , put down roots , watch the international situation anxiously and prepare for war . The background for the seventh , eighth and ninth volumes is the Second World War , which not all the characters survive . The final three books cover the 25 years from the early days of the post @-@ war Attlee government to the counterculture and protests of the early 1970s . During the long narrative , the focus changes frequently from one group to another ; new faces appear while established characters are written out , sometimes reappearing after many volumes , sometimes not at all , though news of their doings may reach Jenkins , through one or other of his many acquaintances . Apart from Jenkins , Widmerpool is the only one of the 300 @-@ odd characters who takes part in the action of each of the 12 volumes . Richard Jones , writing in the Virginia Quarterly Review , suggests that the novels may be regarded as " the dance of Kenneth Widmerpool , who is Jenkins 's fall @-@ guy , tormentor , and antithesis " . Widmerpool dogs Jenkins 's career and life ; in the opening pages of the first book at school , he is encountered running through the mists , in the vain hope of athletic glory . In the final stages of the last book he is running again , this time at the behest of the quasi @-@ religious cult that has claimed him . 
