Continuing the story of Vic Brown, we find that, having been unwillingly thrust into the cold and murky waters of matrimony in A Kind of Loving, and after three years of trying to live with Ingrid, he is still struggling to keep afloat. Their marriage has become a kind of living – until a lifebuoy affair bobs on to his horizon, enlarging his world and enabling him to break out from the bonds of matrimony. It is Donna Perryman, a stunningly attractive actress, and the devastating effect she has on his life, that is the subject of The Watchers on the Shore, the brilliant sequel to A Kind of Loving, now regarded as a classic of post-war literature.