Philip Stainton
In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service abroad the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.
A gang of five diverse oddball criminal types rent a two room apartment in an isolated house on a London cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow with three pet parrots. The group’s mastermind, Professor Marcus, tells her a cover story that they are members of an amateur string quintet and would like to use the rooms to hone their musical skills. In reality, they’re plotting to rob a bank and plan to use Mrs. Wilberforce’s naiveté and her Victorian sensibilities to their advantage.
Henry Hobson owns and tyrannically runs a successful Victorian boot maker’s shop in Salford, England. A stingy widower with a weakness for overindulging in the local Moonraker Public House, he exploits his three daughters as cheap labour. When he declares that there will be ‘no marriages’ to avoid the expense of marriage settlements at £500 each, his eldest daughter Maggie rebels.
The summer of 1940, Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird (nicknamed ‘Septic’ due to his initials) must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow squadron mates, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history. This is the story of just one of “The Few” and how they managed to fight off the might of the Luftwaffe, despite overwhelming German air power.