During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.

In 1920, Major Dellaplane, a man of honor and ethics, searches for missing French soldiers. He meets Madame Irène de Courtil, a politically connected Parisian, and their paths cross.

Tommy Fawkes wants to be a successful comedian. After his Las Vegas debut is a failure, he returns to Blackpool where his father—also a comedian—started, and where he spent the summers of his childhood.

In seventeenth century England Lord Whitman wages unending war on what he sees as the ever-present scourge of witchcraft, and many local villagers have suffered at his hands. But one victim uses her occult powers to curse his family, enlisting unknowing help from one of the household.