How Dear is Life follows the story of Phillip Maddison in the portentous months leading to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.

Now a clerk in the Moon Fire Office in London, Phillip decides to join the territorials, attracted by the money, by the camp near the sea, by the prospect of a new suit of clothes. As the last glorious summer slips away war seems unreal, but the old world is shortly to fall to pieces, never to return, as the British Expeditionary Force sets sail for France.