by David Rudkin

The Wilderness family is oddly assorted. The Rev. Elwyn Wilderness is a nonconformist preacher whose unconventional behaviour is a constant source of embarrassment to his wife Molly and daughter Blodwen. Ioan, his son, is also a nonconformist, but he is a painter and, as his family suspects, uninterested in women and marriage. He realises the isolation into which his sister is sinking and urges her to go out and face the world beyond the local Sunday School. However, Blodwen and her mother form a closely knit unit in which any contact with the realities of life is shunned. When Blodwen is finally flung by circumstances into communication with people of her own generation, the experience proves horrifyingly traumatic.