Now a multi Oscar-winning film, this is a tale of love and confusion set at end of the Second World War, following a small group of shell-shocked characters thrown together in an Italian villa.

June 1939. In Germany, Otto Hahn has produced the first man-made fission and an atomic device is now a very real possibility. The Nazis set up the Uranverein group of physicists: its task is to build a superbomb. The German High Command is aware that British and US scientists are working on a similar line. Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory is where the atom was split in 1932. Might the Cambridge men now win the race for a nuclear bomb? Hitler's generals...

John Nichol, Gulf War veteran and ex-POW in Iraq, reveals the true cost of flying the iconic and deadly Lancaster - through the few authentic voices of the RAF veterans who are left to us.

For the ordinary people of Empire Street, life will never be the same again. Kitty Fisher has plenty on her plate to keep her busy. Since her mother died when she was just a child, she's cooked, cleaned and scraped to make ends meet for her drunken father and her headstrong brothers. Rita Kennedy, living with her husband under the roof of his spiteful mother-in-law, is desperate for their own home. Perhaps that will help them get their marriage back...

It's 1942 and World War Two is in full swing. In Manchester, Lily Mullins is determined to do her bit for the war effort. Her friends and her sweetheart have all joined up and Lily's sure there must be a role for her that goes further than knitting socks for the troops! Lily had always dreamed of flying, so she jumps at the chance to become a WAAF and soon discovers that she has a talent as a wireless operator. Helped along the way by a gang of girls...

Alice Lake and her friend Edith have had everything thrown at them in their first year as district nurses in London's East End. From babies born out of wedlock to battered wives, they've had plenty to keep them occupied. As rationing takes hold and Hitler's bombers train their sights on London, Edith tries to battle on bravely while bearing her own heartache, but there's no escaping the reality of being at war, or the new terror of the bombing raids....

Spring 1935. Two girls meet by chance on Hampstead Heath. To an outsider, they could not appear more different. Verity is well-mannered and smartly dressed, living with her parents in a beautiful house close to the heath. Ruby is dishevelled and grubby, used to a life of squalor where she is forced to steal to survive. Yet there's an instant affinity and when their fortunes are shockingly reversed, it is the strength of their friendship that keeps...

Ethiopia. 1935. With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers...

August 1940: As the Luftwaffe swarm over Liverpool, Shane Quinn decides to move his family back to the safety of Ireland. But his only child, the beautiful Dana, would rather stay and serve her country than flee to a foreign land. Determined to make it on her own, she joins the WAAF with newfound pals Patty and Lucy. There's plenty of excitement to be had on a RAF station, even a chance or two at love. But the stark reality of war begins to take its...

When the family home in London is bombed in the early 1940s, Maddie and her two young daughters take refuge in Norfolk, in the country house where Maddie's husband Philip spent the summers of his childhood. But Philip is gone, believed to have been killed in action in northern France. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Maddie refuses to give up hope that she and Philip will some day be reunited. Something happened at Knyghton one summer...