Downtrodden wife and mother Nella's life takes an unexpected turn for the better after she joins the Women's Voluntary Service office in Barrow-in-Furness during the Second World War. However, her new-found happiness is shattered when her son Cliff leaves to join the troops - provoking a painful confrontation with her husband Will.

Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert fight a desperate battle to survive.

Birdsong tells a mesmerising story of love and courage, before and during the war. In pre-war France, a young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, embarks on a passionate and dangerous affair with the beautiful Isabelle Azaire that turns their worlds upside down. As the war breaks out, Stephen must lead his men through the carnage of the Battle of the Somme and through the sprawling tunnels that lie deep underground beneath the battle fields. Faced with the unprecedented horror of the war, Stephen clings to the memory of Isabelle and the idyll of his former life as his world explodes around him.

When Mr. Whicher, a retired policeman, helps a country lady to find her niece, he is drawn into a disturbing case of murder which brings him up against wealthy and powerful figures and throws him into conflict with his former police colleagues.