The novel's fictional hero was based partly upon the author's own experiences as a Member of Parliament, and partly upon his friend Robert Falcon Scott, who at that time had yet to start out on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. On its publication, the book was greeted as one of the best parliamentary novels since Disraeli's, and at the same time "as absorbing and admirably written as any A.E.W. Mason has done".