THEIR VERY OWN AND GOLDEN CITY : ANDREW COBHAM, an apprentice draughtsman, and his young friends from Durham spend a day sketching in Durham Cathedral. On entering, ANDREW is overwhelmed. The year is 1926. As though by osmosis ANDREW knows that one day he will become an architect. The youthful, exuberant friends talk about the future that is all before them. They will build six beautiful cities, which will be paid for and owned by the people who live in them. Industry will be capitalised by the Trade Unions. In the beginning all happens as they plan. We constantly return to the Cathedral to witness their ardent hopes paralleling their future until, at a certain moment, that future swerves in a different direction. Reality in conflict with the Dream.

THE JOURNALISTS : Mary Mortimer, the central character, a tough journalist with her own column becomes obsessed by a charismatic Labour politician she suspects is a charlatan, and is determined to bring him down. In the process she destroys the life of one of her children.

BADENHEIM 1939 : It's a chilling novel. Badenheim is a spa to which middle-class, bohemian Jews have been coming year after year. At its centre is an arts festival. In 1939 strange happenings occur. Sanitary inspectors gradually take over the spa and inform it's Jewish residents that soon they'll be going to Poland. Barbed wire springs up around the small town, guard dogs proliferate, other Jews appear, herded into the area, and the facilities begin to break down or cease to function. Over the summer the spa falls to pieces. On the last day all the Jews are marched to the station for transport to Poland. Some are quite looking forward to the journey. They imagine it will be a train that takes them to their destination. When cattle trucks draw up, the festival organiser, ever optimistic, observes: "Well! If the coaches are so dirty it must mean that we have not far to go."

PHOENIX : Two couples, one Danish one English, share a warm Whitsun holiday in the Cambridgeshire countryside. KARL-OLAF, a historian, is spending a post-graduate year in Cambridge with his wife, JANIKA, a social worker, and their two children. RAPHAEL, professor of history of art, (and one time senior lecturer to KARL-OLAF), together with his wife, MADEAU, are visiting the Danes. Balmy days are spent eating, cycling, lazing in the sun, listening to music, and conversing. KARL-OLAF and JANIKA are having matrimonial problems. RAPHAEL is going through a crisis of political belief, with MADEAU anxiously looking on. The calm and balmy days contrast with tensions of heart and mind.