An author seeking solitude in a small hotel in the South of France is an unwilling witness to a relationship between a young couple and two interior designers.

Set in the fields of Devon and the WW1 battlefields of Flanders, two brothers fall for the same girl while contending with the pressures of their feudal family life, the war, and the price of courage and cowardice.

In June 2003, Reg Keys and his wife Sally return to their home in the Welsh countryside. As they switch on the TV to hear six military policemen have been murdered in Iraq, two men arrive bearing the terrible news that their son, Tom, was among them.

Lorraine Barrie, a fading but brilliant actress with a penchant for manipulating every theatrical endeavour to her best advantage, meets her match when she must trust her success to an equally willful stage director.

Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. 'Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?' she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent.

An irreverent barrister chooses to defend a young Jamaican boy accused of stabbing on the same day his only son leaves for college in America.

In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.

Iago and a comrade-in-arms are outside the Venice home of Desdemona's father, who does not yet know that she has eloped with Othello. Iago confides to his friend -- who had hoped to marry Desdemona -- that he serves Othello to further his own ends. Venice needs Othello to protect its commercial interests in Cyprus where the Turkish fleet is headed. Desdemona insists on going to Cyprus, too. In Cyprus, Iago plots to convince Othello that Desdemona has betrayed him with Cassio. A lot more than political ambition seems to be motivating Iago.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Winsome art critic Peter visits married artists Gilberto and Vera in Brazil for Christmas. Gilberto and Peter are more than friends though, and jealous romantic entanglements ensue when it becomes apparent that Gilberto’s marriage is not over just yet.