A highly imaginative boy involves his friends in a series of false alarms, with the result that nobody will come to his aid when he is involved in a dangerous situation.

England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter.

During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.

An inept British WWII commander leads his troops to a series of misadventures in North Africa and Europe.

A megalomaniac dictator, in charge of a former colony, installs a nuclear bomb in its London Embassy. He threatens to set it off, unless a huge ransom is paid. The question for the government is whether he will set it off anyway?