It is 1957. The Suez Crisis has been and gone. Henry Pratt has completed his National Service and is putting his unsuccessful career as Thurmarsh's cub journalist behind him. Leaving Yorkshire, he's taking on a new role and a new challenge - working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds.
Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, Henry Pratt accumulates jobs, marriages and children on the way as he embarks on a touching, painful and hilarious switchback ride through a divided Britain.
Henry Pratt, back home from National Service, is a man at last. As eager to prove it as he is to please, he is in at the deep end in his chosen profession - cub reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus.
As trams and typewriters chatter to the echoes of Suez and Hungary, Henry finds himself in an exciting if bewildering world. His first scoop about a stolen colander is not quite as straightforward as he hopes.
Misprints and chuckles abound as ever-hopeful Henry manages to fall foul both of typesetters and attractive women. And, in a profession not noted for kindness to the diffident, he is as prone to accident as practical jokes.
Nothing ever goes quite right for Henry. So when the scoop of a lifetime finally comes his way it threatens to upset the family and complicate further his ever-hopeful love life.