The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley: Summary, Key Moments & Review

Some phrases, once heard, etch themselves into memory forever, becoming a hallmark not only of a book but of an entire cultural layer. The opening line of Leslie Poles Hartley’s novel The Go-Between—“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”—is precisely one of them.

This idea hovers over every page of the work, setting the tone for a profound and melancholic exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the irreversibility of time.

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, Book cover.

Published in 1953, the novel is considered the pinnacle of Hartley’s career, masterfully blending elements of social drama, psychological prose, and an ethereal, almost mystical narrative.

Hartley transports the reader to a sweltering summer at the beginning of the 20th century, to a world not yet shaken by global upheavals, but already full of hidden tensions.

The story recalled by the elderly protagonist is not merely a nostalgic glance at youth. It is an attempt to understand how a single event, occurring at the age of twelve, can cast a shadow over an entire subsequent life.

The Go-Between is less a tale of “what happened” than a subtle analysis of “why it happened” and how, years later, we try to come to terms with our own past—a past that remains a mysterious and not fully understood “foreign country” to us.

The Go-Between – Summary & Plot Overview

The novel’s narrative is structured as the recollection of an elderly man, Leo Colston, reflecting on events that took place during the summer of 1900, when he was twelve years old.

Leo, a child from a well-to-do family but not particularly robust or sociable, comes to spend his holidays at Brandham Hall, the country estate of his aristocratic schoolmate Marcus Maudsley.

The atmosphere of the large, stifling house, filled with adults and their complex, often incomprehensible relationships, provides the backdrop for Leo’s personal coming of age.

Initially, Leo’s world revolves around Marcus, but everything changes with the arrival of his friend’s sister, the beautiful Marian Maudsley.

Nearly ten years older than Leo, she becomes the object of his awed, almost chivalric admiration. She embodies all that is adult, mysterious, and alluring—both enticing and intimidating at the same time.

Leo becomes immersed in her charm, and it is Marian who playfully dubs him “the go-between”—the one who can discreetly deliver messages.

Soon, this playful role takes on real significance. Marian becomes involved in a secret romance with Ted Burgess, the tenant farmer—a man from a completely different world: rough, physically strong, and a striking contrast to the refined, though somewhat cold, aristocratic environment of Brandham Hall.

The social barriers of the time make their relationship impossible to reveal publicly, and Leo becomes the sole link connecting the lovers. Flattered by Marian’s trust, the boy carries out his mission with zeal and awe: he secretly delivers notes between Marian and Ted, arranging times and places for their meetings.

For Leo, this activity is shrouded in a halo of romance and mystery. He does not yet fully grasp the true nature of Marian and Ted’s relationship, perceiving it as a kind of elevated yet dangerous intrigue.

His own feelings for Marian are a mixture of admiration, jealousy, and a vague desire to be a hero in her eyes. Each task becomes a test for him, filled with the fear of being discovered and the thrill of participating in the world of adult passions.

The climax of this secret activity comes with a pivotal task: Marian asks Leo to deliver a note to Ted requesting a meeting—not just anywhere, but at a remote forest clearing known as “The Obelisk.” Tension reaches its peak. Leo senses that something far more serious is unfolding than before.

He carries out the request, and the meeting becomes a point of no return. Hartley masterfully never shows the rendezvous directly; we see it through Leo’s eyes, as he, driven by anxiety and curiosity, secretly watches the lovers. The scene is devoid of crude realism, yet it is charged with intense emotion—for the boy, it becomes a confrontation with a reality that shatters his childhood illusions of love and devotion.

The consequences are swift. What was secret becomes exposed—Marian and Ted’s romance is revealed to her family and her fiancé, Lord Trimingham, a nobleman who truly loves her. A scandal erupts.

Leo, feeling both guilty and betrayed, finds himself at the center of a storm of adult emotions—anger, shame, despair. His idealized image of Marian crumbles, and with it, his childhood comes to an end. The summer at Brandham Hall concludes, and Leo is taken away, leaving behind a world of shattered relationships and his own lost innocence.

Decades later, the elderly Leo, sorting through old belongings, comes across relics of that summer—letters, trinkets—that force him to relive and reinterpret those events. He realizes that he was not merely a passive instrument in the hands of adults, but an active participant whose own feelings and actions shaped the outcome.

The novel’s ending is not simply a statement of facts, but a profound reflection on how the past continues to live within us, how we mythologize it, and how a single tragedy can permanently shape our inner landscape. The story of The Go-Between becomes a story of guilt, the irrevocability of choice, and the price one pays for insight.

Major characters

Leo Colston

In creating Leo Colston, Hartley achieved something remarkable, crafting not just a narrator but a deeply dual figure existing simultaneously in two temporal layers. We meet him as an elderly, solitary man for whom the past has become an all-consuming obsession, and at the same time, we see the world through the eyes of his twelve-year-old self. It is precisely this contrast—between a child’s perception and an adult’s wisdom (and burden)—that forms the narrative’s core tension.

Young Leo is a bundle of impressions and not fully understood emotions. He is observant beyond his years but lacks the life experience to interpret what he sees accurately. His role as “the go-between” flatters him, giving him a sense of significance, yet at the same time, he becomes a pawn of other people’s passions. His tragedy lies in the collision of childhood innocence with the selfish realities of the adult world.

Looking back, the elderly Leo attempts not merely to recall events, but to understand their cause-and-effect, to separate his childhood fantasies from harsh reality. He realizes he was not simply a messenger, but an active participant in the drama, whose own still-forming feelings for Marian fueled his willingness to serve her. His journey is one of lost illusions, and his memory becomes the true “go-between” linking his younger self to his adult self.

Marian Maudsley

Marian is the central source of tension in the novel, a figure both alluring and tragic. To Leo, she is a goddess, the embodiment of everything beautiful and unattainable in the adult world. Yet Hartley gradually reveals her complex and often contradictory nature.

She is a product of her environment—an aristocrat destined for a marriage of convenience to Lord Trimingham—but within her burns a rebellious spirit, a longing for true, passionate love, which she finds in the arms of Ted Burgess. Her manipulation of Leo is key to understanding her character. She is not a villain, yet her actions are driven by desperation and selfishness. She sees in the boy the perfect, discreet instrument and, without considering the consequences for his fragile psyche, uses him.

Within Marian, social conventions and natural passion, duty and desire, are in constant conflict. Her tragedy lies in the fact that her rebellion brings disaster to all involved. She is the force that shatters the idyllic world of Brandham Hall, yet she herself becomes its victim, forced to bear the burden of her choices.

Ted Burgess

Ted Burgess serves in the novel as a powerful symbol of everything natural, physical, and beyond the control of refined aristocratic rules. He is a tenant farmer, a man of the land, whose masculine, almost primal strength contrasts sharply with the somewhat decadent sophistication of the estate’s inhabitants.

To Leo, Ted is both an object of fear and admiration; he embodies the raw reality that the boy neither knows nor fully understands, yet instinctively fears. His relationship with Marian is not just a love affair, but a clash of two worlds, two social classes. In Ted, the world of Brandham Hall confronts something authentic and untamable.

Hartley, however, avoids oversimplification: Ted is not merely a “noble savage.” His actions also reveal calculation and an awareness of the risks he takes. Yet his fate is most decisively shaped by the social barriers he and Marian attempt to overcome.

Marcus Maudsley

Although Marcus, Leo’s schoolmate, may seem like a secondary character, his role is significant. He serves as a kind of bridge between Leo’s world and the adult world of the Maudsleys. Through their friendship, Hartley highlights differences in upbringing, mentality, and perception.

Being part of the family, Marcus is more cynical and aware of the hidden currents within the house. His illness, which temporarily removes him from the narrative, serves as a symbolic act: it is his absence that allows Leo to grow closer to Marian and fully assume the role of “the go-between.”

Marcus represents the last thread connecting Leo to his ordinary childhood world. When that thread breaks, Leo is left alone to navigate the foreign and perilous games of the adult world.

Key Moments & Memorable Scenes

Hartley’s novel is not driven by fast-paced action, but by a series of tense, almost static moments that linger in the memory like vivid snapshots. These scenes serve as focal points for the work’s central themes—innocence and experience, passion and social convention.

Arguably, one of the most powerful scenes is at the Obelisk, the climax of the secret romance. Carrying out his errand, Leo approaches the lovers’ meeting place, but instead of leaving immediately, he hides in the bushes. He becomes an unwitting witness to their intimate encounter.

Hartley’s genius lies in portraying the event not directly, but through the perception of a child, for whom it is a confusing, unsettling, and yet mesmerizing spectacle. Leo does not see physiology; he perceives something almost mystical, imagining that Ted is “casting a spell” over Marian.

This scene marks the collapse of the child’s world. The boundary between naive perception and harsh reality crumbles, leaving Leo in a state of shock and bewilderment. The Obelisk, a silent witness to what transpires, stands as a cold, unyielding monument to lost innocence.

Equally important is the scene in which Leo first assumes the role of “the go-between.” Marian playfully gives him this title, and the boy, flattered by her attention, eagerly embraces it.

This seemingly minor episode carries fateful consequences. Hartley subtly demonstrates how flattery and the desire to feel significant in the eyes of an admired figure can blind a child, compelling him to shoulder adult burdens beyond his capacity. The moment when Leo hides the first note in his jacket cuff becomes a point of no return—a symbolic initiation into a secret that will consume him.

The final chord of that fateful summer—the scandal when secrets are revealed—is equally memorable. Hartley does not show the heated confrontations directly. Instead, we sense the catastrophe through the tense atmosphere in the house, the frightened glances of the servants, and the sharply altered perception of Leo himself.

He is no longer seen as a sweet child; he has become an accomplice, a pawn in a game exposed by others. It is a moment of complete isolation and the painful realization of his own mistake.

The sweltering summer of 1900 holds a special power in the novel, becoming a key “character” in its own right. The oppressive heat that gripped England that year is not merely a backdrop; it serves as a metaphor for the rising passions and hidden tensions on the verge of eruption.

The heat weighs heavily on the characters, clouding their judgment and compelling them to act on impulse. It creates a sense of unreality, a dreamlike atmosphere from which Leo emerges forever changed when the summer ends and a cold autumn arrives, coinciding with the collapse of his world.

These visual and sensory images make Leo’s past vividly alive and traumatic, explaining why this “cursed summer” remains forever his own “foreign country.”

Why You Should Read “The Go-Between”?

The Go-Between is not merely a classic of English literature, frozen in the past. It is a living, pulsating novel that still speaks to readers today through universal yet deeply personal themes.

One of the key reasons to turn to this book is its profound and delicate exploration of the workings of memory. Hartley shows that our past is not an archive neatly filed into folders, but a constantly rewriting text, where real events intertwine with our later interpretations, feelings of guilt, and nostalgia.

Every adult inevitably faces the question: Who was I then, and what from that past shaped me into the person I am today? Leo Colston invites us to walk that path alongside him.

Moreover, the novel is a brilliant example of psychological realism. Hartley portrays the inner world of a child with exquisite precision, neither simplifying nor condescending.

He allows us to experience the full range of twelve-year-old Leo’s emotions—from ecstatic admiration to bitter disappointment. It is a masterful portrait of the painful shattering of childhood illusions, a process that everyone encounters in one form or another.

For those interested in historical context, The Go-Between serves as a perfect time capsule. It captures a moment on the eve of monumental change—the summer of 1900, the final chord of the Victorian era, when the old aristocratic order still existed but its foundations were already cracking.

The story of a forbidden love between an aristocrat and a farmer is not only a personal drama but also a microcosm of the social tensions that would soon transform England forever.

Finally, the novel possesses an extraordinary atmosphere. The sweltering, stagnant summer, the tense silence of the estate, the secret charged with anticipation—all combine to create a unique sense of uneasy beauty.

Hartley is a true master of “telling” details and subtext, where a glance or a silence often conveys more than lengthy dialogue. The Go-Between is a novel for the thoughtful reader, one willing not merely to follow the plot, but to immerse themselves in the complex world of human psychology, and, like Leo himself, reflect on the ghosts of their own past and the chasm that separates us from the country called “then.”