Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.

English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.

Executive Harold Pelham suffers a serious accident after which he faces the shadow of death. When, against all odds, he miraculously recovers, he discovers that his life does not belong to him anymore.

Schoolteacher William Potts is the double of a captured German spy, so he is sent to Germany by British Intelligence to obtain the plans of a new secret weapon, causing chaos in a Hitler Youth school in the process.

Three navy veterans drift into smuggling in the bleak economic climate of post-World War II Britain. Initially they carry only innocuous contraband items like wine, which are in short supply on the English black market, but through the greed and arrogance of George Hoskins, one of trio, they get involved with the corrupt Major Fordyce, who brings them higher-risk cargoes like counterfeit currency and automatic weapons. At first, Bill Randall, skipper of the 1087, compromises his conscience by turning a blind eye to the morality their actions, but has a crisis of conscience when he discovers that the nervous, suspicious-looking man they smuggled across the channel is a child murderer and apparent pedophile. He and Birdie, the ship's mechanic, decide that they've had enough.

Work has been going with a bang for freelance assassin Hawkins but a job in England just after the war is a different matter. His apparently easy target, a pompous government minister, is off for some hanky-panky at the Green Man on the south coast, where Hawkins is planning to retire him for good. But before he can get on with this the hit-man has a procession of unwanted visitors at home to dispose of - one way or another.

Two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the detectives wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry.

A British scientist is discovered to have been passing information to the Communists, then kills himself. Another scientist decides that they might have brainwashed him by a sensory deprivation technique, but he doesn't know if someone really can be convinced to act against their strongest feelings. So he agrees to be the subject in an experiment in which others will try to make him stop loving his wife.

Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.

Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.

A web of blackmail and murder attracts the attention of a barrister with a seemingly idyllic life, threatening to derail his career on the path of success.