A soldier faces a court-martial for killing his friend.

Brothers Michael and David Tremayne decide to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, not for criminal purposes, but to make themselves famous.

Jewel thieves, murder, and a manhunt swirl around a sailor off a cargo ship in post-war London.

Eames is a middle aged man, with a boring, routine job. His life changes when he meets a young girl and a painter. This rekindles his youthful artistic leanings, which he blames his father for stopping.

Henry Wilkes cultivates rare tropical plants as a hobby, with an attention to detail closer to obsession. The length to which he goes to propagate and nurture new hybrids alarms his wife. Is there more going on in the greenhouse than could safely be exhibited at the next Battersea Flower Show?

Mr. Figg, the barber, is fond of telling customers about his family, but he hasn’t really got one – he’s a bachelor quite alone in the world. But that may change.

The TARDIS materialises in Paris in the year 1572 and the Doctor decides to visit the famous apothecary Charles Preslin. Steven, meanwhile, is befriended by a group of Huguenots from the household of the Protestant Admiral de Coligny. Having rescued a young serving girl, Anne Chaplet, from some pursuing guards, the Huguenots gain their first inkling of a heinous plan being hatched at the command of the Catholic Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici.

A thousand years of the gossip, scandals, successes, disasters, eccentricities and cupidity that lie behind the facades of a great city.