George Wyndham Le Strange is one of the strange historical figures who appears in the book as the author travels near his old home. Lord Wyndham was a tank commander who helped liberate the Belsen concentration camp during the Second World War whom, afterwards took to a reclusive life, becoming ever more strange as he took to living underground and never leaving the confines of his home. He even gave his entire land and fortune away to his housekeeper, on the proviso that she never talked to him during meal times.
This strange figure is used by the author as an example of the unique, the particular and the individual that make up the progress of history. The impact of this figure piques the interest of the reader into individual stories and histories, as we are forced to wonder who these individuals are who made up history, what motivated them and what became of them as the great events of civilisation moved on.
The character of Wyndham Le Strange can also be seen not just as the particular and the unique amidst the sea of Time, but also as evidence of the theme of corruption, or the 'darkening' and 'winding down' and the narrator sees everywhere. As the man's life became stranger, smaller and quite literally darker (as he chose to live underground) so too this can be seen as a metaphor for what can happen to whole civilisations and events.
