In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and to another.

When war breaks out, Roe volunteers for the Auxillary Fire Service in London, and is trained under a professional fire officer, Pye. The two men discover that a quite different link exists between them. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Blitz, the relationship between the two men develops.

Offers a view of a class-ridden Britain enduring both war and its aftermath.

Lea de Lonval is a magnificent and aging courtesan facing the end of her career. She has devoted the last six years to the amorous education of the exquisitely handsome and spoilt Cheri - a playboy half her age. When an advantageous marriage is arranged for Cheri, Lea reluctantly decides their relationship must end.

On a routine trip to the supermarket with his daughter one Saturday morning, Stephen Lewis, a well-known writer of children's books, turns his back momentarily. When he looks around again, his child is gone. In a single moment, everything is changed. The kidnapping has a devastating effect on Stephen's life and marriage.

When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left three highly intelligent children to succeed him in turn, to be followed, if their lines failed, by the descendants of his sister, Mary Tudor.

Brighton is braced for war. It's a time in history that never happened, and England's coast has become the front line of the Second World War. Rolls of barbed wire line Brighton Beach, soldiers scan the horizon, people wait nervously for an attack.

In their rambling house near Romney Marsh, the children play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets.