 It is set in and around Kilmarth, where Daphne du Maurier lived from 1967, near the village of Tywardreath, which in Cornish means "House on the Strand".The setting for the story is an ancient Cornish house called Kilmarth, which is based on the house the author had recently bought, following the death of her husband.The narrator, Dick Young, has given up his job and been offered the use of Kilmarth by an old university friend, Magnus Lane, a leading biophysicist in London.