After being offered a 100,000 pound advance to write a book on the twentieth century, a historian/writer struggling with depression takes to London to begin this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

In World War I era Britain, an Oxford University dean tells his colleague about the arm of war that stretched to his small English town and changed the life of the community stonemason. When the stonemason shares his idea for bringing down German planes, he doesn't expect to be so devastated by the death he causes.

As the entirety of the United Kingdom begins to shift and float towards the United States, a man has to contend with the changes to his daily routine and the possibility of his town of Brighton being forced next to New York.

An old linguistics researcher is ousted from his university position on the frontier of a small island he acculturated. Upon his return home, he begins to believe that he and his life's work are marginal.

A man reflects on the past week while an unexpected storm rages outside, and he compares the events that follow with the fall of the Roman Empire.

A young British soldier returns to his home in Westminster after the war, only to find that both he and the city have been impacted by the cruelness of the war.

On the evening of D-Day, a Welsh bartender endures emotional whiplash and xenophobia as friends and foes alike assail her from all sides.

A woman grows obsessed with a single book from the time she is a young adult to her death in old age, as the book's meaning changes for her over time.

In Ceylon, colonized by the British, an Indian Tamil woman describes the events that follow the departure of the British from the plantations. She imagines the possibility of a new world as the Indians reclaim their land. However, the reality that follows shows how the British values persist and are upheld by ethnic differences between the Indians on the plantation.

During the height of World War II bombings in London, a group of British school boys are sent across the Atlantic to a Canadian boarding school. When one of the boys goes missing from the ship, the school attempts to uncover what really happened during the voyage overseas.