Babel Tower, sequel to The Virgin in the Garden (1978; see separate entry) and Still Life (1985), is set in the England of the 1960s and touches on a number of different social concerns. It brings up but does not emphasize fears about nuclear bombs, the Vietnam war, and damage to the environment; it focuses extensively on questions about the English school system, women's roles in society, and freedom of speech. The principal character, Frederica Potter, simultaneously undergoes a divorce from her traditionminded and abusive husband and observes the obscenity trial of a book which at least in part is drawn from the author's experience at a prestigious English public school.

The novel has two intertwining plots and several subplots. Frederica, who speaks several languages and has a First in English literature from Cambridge, leaves her husband, Nigel Reiver, because he does not allow her to work or...