A British Guianese engineer starts a job as a high school teacher in London’s East End, where his uninterested and delinquent pupils are in desperate need of attention and care.

Diplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite for survival despite competing factions, overwhelming odds, delayed relief and tacit support of the Boxers by the Empress of China and her generals.

While attending a Swiss school for diplomats' daughters, the teenage daughter of the American ambassador uses her access to various embassies to engage in espionage.