Seventeen-year-old Richard and his parents take their annual seaside holiday in a guesthouse on England's east coast in the 1950s. Julia, a teenage girl holidaying with her parents in a nearby guesthouse, catches Richard's eye, but her Dutch friend Anna is intent on causing trouble.

Sir Robert Clarke looks back on his life and the summer when as a 16-year-old he first fell in love with Louise St. Leger.

The film centers on the experiences of Robert Lawrence MC, an officer of the Scots Guards during the Falklands War of 1982. While fighting at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, Lawrence is shot in the head by an Argentine sniper and left paralyzed on his left side. He then must learn to adjust to his new disability.

In 1945, the Carlions assemble at an English country house for a family gathering. During the event, they must determine who is to take over the family brewing empire, since the present head of the business, Sir Frederick, is getting old. The results of the 1945 general election causes a major stir, and some angry farmers occupy a barn.

Francis Ashby, a senior Oxford don on holiday alone in the Alps, meets holidaying American Caroline and her companion Elinor, the blossoming Irish-American girl she adopted many years before. Ashby finds he enjoys their company, particularly that of Elinor, and both the women are drawn to him. Back at Oxford he is nevertheless taken aback when they arrive unannounced. Women are not allowed in the College grounds, let alone the rooms. Indeed any liaison, however innocent, is frowned on by the upstanding Fellows.