After a chance train encounter with Laurence Knight, Tom Blake's family's fortunes prosper on the beneficence of the great financier. A developing friendship leads to the Knights selling their home to the Blakes when they move back to London. All looks rosy for the Blakes as share prices in Mr Knight's new business venture soar, but is their confidence misplaced?

In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.

During the Second World War a British schoolteacher working in Denmark is caught up when the Germans invade.

At the height of World War II, the Germans discover that a certain British personage is to stay at the country house of Lord Buckley. They devise a plan whereby they will kidnap the real Lord Buckley, and send to England an actor who will masquerade, lie in wait for the visitor with a number of gunmen, and take him back to Germany.

David Charleston, once a world renowned journalist, now lives alone maintaining the Thunder Rock lighthouse in Lake Michigan. He doesn't cash his paychecks and has no contact other than the monthly inspector's visit. When alone, he imagines conversations with those who died when a 19th century packet ship with some 60 passengers sank. He imagines their lives, their problems, their fears and their hopes. In one of these conversations, he recalls his own efforts in the 1930s when he desperately tried to convince first his editors, and later the public, of the dangers of fascism and the inevitability of war. Few would listen. One of the passengers, a spinster, tells her story of seeking independence from a world dominated by men. There's also the case of a doctor who is banished for using unacceptable methods. David has given up on life, but the imaginary passengers give him hope for the future.

Morale-boosting story released in the middle of World War II. A journalist uncovers a peace organisation at the centre of disreputable dealings.

An unjustly condemned corporal flees to Africa, chased by the captain blamed for his escape.