Christopher is the youngest son of an old and affluent family in Yorkshire, the Tietjenses of Groby. He is the novel’s primary protagonist. Christopher is large, strong, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge, is astute in mathematics, and styles himself as the last Tory, though he stands more in the middle ground between Toryism and liberalism—he supports women’s suffrage, for example. He is often described as a meal sack with bulging blue eyes. He has a very strained relationship with his wife, Sylvia, with whom he has a son and from whom he cannot get a divorce. He is in love with Valentine Wannop, though it takes a while for him to admit it to himself. Christopher walks the boundary between an older Britain and the emerging, modern Britain. He struggles to maintain his unwavering moral standards in an increasingly immoral society. He is somewhat of a dynamic character in that he undergoes a mild change of character through the war which pushes him in a direction he had always wanted to embrace, to some degree.

Christopher begins the novel working for the Department of Statistics. He is very good at his job, since he is an excellent mathematician, but his strong moral code prevents him from faking numbers for political ends.