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...

Irena is a young medical student living in Warsaw when the German army invade Poland. Those closest to her are dying and when Irena realises that no one is coming to Poland's aid, it's clear that she is alone. Forced to flee to Britain, Irena meets Richard, a RAF pilot who she's instantly drawn to and there's a glimmer of happiness on the horizon. And then the war becomes more brutal and in order to right a never-forgotten wrong Irena must make an...

Hitler's war is reaching out to affect every member of the Neylor family. Val Neylor, driving an ambulance through the blazing heart of London, is in an impossible position, for the man she loves is a fighter pilot with the Luftwaffe. And Jenny, whose husband Simon is flying Spitfires, finds herself working as a landgirl on a Devon farm. Cara, by contrast, develops her social life, and Maudie, in the WAAF, falls in love with two men at once. And Tina,...

Edie Kelsey and Lil Horton have been friends for over twenty years, living tough lives as the wives of fishermen in Grimsby. So it came as no surprise that their children were close and that Edie's son, Frank, and Lil's daughter, Irene, fell in love and married at a young age. But the declaration of war in 1939 changes everything. Frank goes off to fight and Irene and baby Tommy, along with Edie's youngest son, are sent to the countryside for safety....

Sweden, 1942. Two old friends meet. They are cousins. One is Prince George, Duke of Kent, brother of the King of England. The other is Prince Philipp von Hesse, a committed Nazi and close friend of Adolf Hitler. Days later, Prince George is killed in a plane crash in the north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident - but not everyone is convinced. There is even a suggestion that the Duke's plane was sabotaged. With no evidence,...

Cousins Masha and Rachel Morgenstern board the luxury liner the SS Manhattan bound for New York, desperate to escape the concentration camps that claimed the rest of their family. America offers a safe haven, but to reach it they must survive a hazardous Atlantic crossing. Among their fellow passengers fleeing the war, each with their own conflicts, secrets and surprises, are the composer Igor Stravinsky, making a new start after a decade of tragedy,...

In 1940, during the Phony War, a French destroyer blows up in the Firth of Clyde, just off the coast from Greenock. The disaster is witnessed by Jackie, a young girl who, for a time, thinks she caused the explosion by running away that day from school; by her mother Helen, a spirited woman married to a dreary young soldier; and by a Polish officer, whose country has just been erased from the map by Hitler and Stalin. Their lives, and the lives of...

Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the 'back room boys' of the Second World War. A crippling disability has left him cynical and disillusioned - he struggles with a drink problem at home, and politics and petty pride at work. Worse still, he fears he is not good enough for the woman he loves. The stakes are raised when the enemy begin to drop a new type of booby-trapped bomb, causing many casualties. Only Sammy has the know-how to diffuse it...

In a great English house, a young woman offers herself to one of the most powerful and influential figures in the land - but this is no ordinary seduction. She plans to ensure his death. On holiday in France, Professor Tom Wilde discovers his brilliant student Julian Marfield, who disappeared two years earlier to join the International Brigades in Spain, in the Le Vernet concentration camp in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Wilde secures his release...

Sydney, 1942 - the year of the fall of Singapore, the bombing of Darwin and the surprise attack on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines. Australia is surely doomed to fall to the Japanese ... Through the eyes of a naive young priest we see into the hearts of a people who fear the end of life as they know it. In the confessional, Father Frank Darragh hears how his community is changing - how the very real fear of invasion by the Japanese is...