Coming Up for Air opens with George Bowling, who is 45 years old, going to London to acquire a set of false teeth. Bowling has had a long life, and has many memories that come along with it. He took the day off of work to go to London, and, while driving, he sees a simple poster for the King of Albania. The poster sets him off on a journey of memory to his childhood, in which he describes in first person to the reader that he remembered a similar type of king from Sunday School. We learn that Bowling is accustomed to thinking about his childhood when the smell of the London streets bring him to the thought of where he grew up. He then thinks about the WWI and how lucky he was during it.
The book then skips ahead to a portion of Bowling's life in which he won a bet on a horserace. Having a wife and kids, he does not want to reveal that he won this money, as it may upset them. His wife brings him along to a book club, in which a speaker proclaims anti-fascist remarks of which Bowling is terrified. The book club reminds him of his schoolteacher, Porteous, who is now old and, as Bowling finds, has a dry and boring tone about him.
At last, Bowling decides to use the money that he won for a good cause - a tour of all of the places in his childhood. Upon returning to his hometown, he finds nothing recognizable except for an old pub. His old home now a tea shop, he realizes that the old church is also the same. He finds an old girlfriend, her face and eyes warped by time so that she has none of the beautiful qualities that he once saw in her. She doesn't know who Bowling is, and takes him for a crazy man. Recalling an old estate at which he used to fish, he travels to the unforgettable pond. Perhaps, however, it is forgettable to "Progress", since the estate has become plaza and the pond a garbage pit.
Saddened that he can never return to this place he called home as a child, more grief strikes him as events occur that signal the oncoming WWII.
