Dillwyn Knox had been a student and Fellow at King's, whose Provost at the time, M. R. James, was - like the Dr Matthews of the novel - a medievalist, palaeographer and author of ghost stories. Fitzgerald explained that "I set my novel in the Cambridge of 1912 because that was the height of the so-called ' mind/body controversy ' with the scientists of the Cavendish in controversy with professing Christians, championed by James... The ghost story is there to give atmosphere to the anti-materialists of Cambridge, who don't believe that physics can explain everything."