Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.

Over several decades throughout the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, Mr Arthur Chipping rises from a shy, nervous teacher to the beloved, revered headmaster of Brookfield School, with his life and career shaped by his love for his wife and his unwavering dedication to his students.

Renowned for his excess, King Henry VIII goes through a series of wives during his rule. With Anne Boleyn, his second wife, executed on charges of treason, King Henry weds maid Jane Seymour, but that marriage also ends in tragedy. Not one to be single for long, the king picks German-born Anne of Cleves as his bride, but their union lasts only months before an annulment is granted, and King Henry continues his string of spouses.

All her life, Englishwoman Gladys Aylward knew that China was the place where she belonged. Not qualified to be sent there as a missionary, Gladys works as a domestic to earn the money to send herself to a poor, remote village. There she eventually lives a full and happy life: running the inn, acting as "foot inspector", advising the local Mandarin, and even winning the heart of mixed race Captain Lin Nan. But Gladys discovers her real destiny when the country is invaded by Japan and the Chinese children need her to save their lives. Based on a true story.

After greedy men have Edmound Dantes unjustly imprisoned for 20 years for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him, he escapes to revenge himself on them.

British Captain Terence Stevenson (Robert Donat) accepts an assignment even more dangerous than his everyday job of defusing unexploded bombs. Fluent in Romanian and German and having studied chemical engineering, he is parachuted into Romania to assume the identity of Captain Jan Tartu, a member of the fascist Iron Guard. He makes his way to Czechoslovakia to steal the formula of a new Nazi poison gas and sabotage the factory where it is being manufactured.

Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.

Andrew Manson, a young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor arrives in Wales takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does badly. But when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.

In pre-WW1 England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial.

British agent working in Russia is forced to remain longer than planned once the revolution begins. After being released from prison in Siberia he poses as a Russian Commissar. Because of his position among the revolutionaries, he is able to rescue a Russian countess from the Bolsheviks.