Not long after arriving in London, the Canadian Richard Hannay visits a music hall theatre to watch the star act, Mr Memory, a man who startles his audience with his infallible recollection of trivial facts...
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The life of the idle playboy millionaire does not agree with Ernest Bliss. Worried about his deteriorating health, he is persuaded to see a Harley Street consultant who advises him to give up his extravagant life style for one year and try to get by on less than five pounds a week...
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Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot is proud of the fact that since his arrival in the tranquil coastal village of Turnbotham Round, over a decade ago, not one crime has been committed...
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Dr Alexander Smart is hopeful that a letter of recommendation from his present employer, the Governor of Blackstone Prison, will secure him the post of headmaster at Narkover School...
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Towards the end of the First World War, Madeleine Goddard makes frequent trips between Paris and Stockholm, ostensibly to supply expensive dresses to her wealthy Swedish clientele...
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At the height of the British Raj, trouble is brewing on the Northwest Frontier in India. In an attempt to avoid a full-scale rebellion, the British governor signs a peace treaty with the ruler of Tokot, an area of great significance in the region...
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Two tourists holidaying in the Hebrides land on the deserted island of Hirta. Their guide Andrew Gray explains that until a decade ago there was a thriving community on the island...
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Dr Benjamin Twist is a hopelessly inept schoolmaster at one of England's minor public schools. When a visit by a school inspector ends in disaster, Dr Twist is informed that he will be dismissed and the school closed down unless his students win an inter-schools examination, to be held in London...
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England, 1933. Although officially retired, Mr Chipping still maintains a visible presence at Brookfield School For Boys, a private school to which he has devoted 63 years of his adult life...
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During the long summer holidays, schoolmaster Dr Benjamin Twist finds work as a ship's porter at Southampton docks. He hopes to earn enough money to pay his fare to the United States, where he intends to open a school for uneducated Americans...
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After the death of her mother, a young Irish girl named Mary Yellen travels to England to stay with her aunt Patience, who lives at an inn in Cornwall...
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1913. Fothergill, a British journalist facing expulsion from Russia, accepts the offer of a friend to work as a spy. Under the name Peter Ouranoff, he infiltrates a group of revolutionaries, but is arrested after an attempt to blow up the government minister Vladinoff...
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In 1912, the princess Aurore accompanies her father to the European principality of Lautenburg, where the king, her uncle, tells her she is to marry his heir, the Grand Duke Rodolphe...
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A group of British travellers are stranded in a hotel in a remote European country. After holidaying with some friends, Iris Henderson is on her way back home to get married...
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Three gods looking down on planet Earth mock the inability of its puny inhabitants to improve their lot. Believing that mankind is capable of better, one of the gods endows one randomly selected individual with the ability to perform miracles...
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Bob and Jill Lawrence are on a skiing holiday in the Swiss alps when their friend, Louis Bernard, is shot dead. Before he dies, Louis reveals that he is a British spy and that he has a secret message, warning of an imminent high-profile assassination...
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Norah Baring, a member of a provincial theatre company, is arrested and tried for the murder of a fellow actress. The jury finds her guilty and she is condemned to death...
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On entering a seemingly abandoned old house one night, a detective discovers a Cockney tramp named Ben and a dead body. An attractive young girl named Rose suddenly falls in through a skylight...
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After having failed in virtually every other job going, railway employee William Porter finally feels he has found his metier as a wheel-tapper, but his sister decides that this is too lowly a position for him...
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England, 1536. As one wife mounts the scaffold, another prepares to take her wedding vows. King Henry VIII is confident that this third marriage, to the beautiful but dim Jane Seymour, will be a success...
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Henry Higgins is a professor of phonetics for whom the rich variety of London accents holds a particular fascination. Whilst navigating Covent Garden one evening, he encounters a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, and is amused by her strong Cockney accent...
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William Garland is the Director General of the National Broadcasting Group. From his office (which he seldom leaves), he runs a smooth operation and cannot understand why his programmes, which consist mainly of uninspired classical recitals and incomprehensible lectures, are so unpopular...
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London is the target of terrorist attacks by an unknown foreign power. One of the foot soldiers in this campaign of terror is Karl Verloc, the owner of a small cinema...
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