Laye-Parker, M.P., and Smith, a Lobby Correspondent, have reached Moscow in their search for Kuprin, a Soviet rocket expert whom they knew at Cambridge and whom they hope to persuade to return to England. Now Laye-Parker has been arrested by the M.V.D. on unspecified charges, and Smith, a reluctant partner in the enterprise, must carry on the search alone.
After the manned satellite, the armed satellite. Kuprin, the Soviet scientist, is working on a warhead for the Chelovyek. But Laye-Parker, M.P., and Smith, a Lobby Correspondent at the House of Commons, remember him at Cambridge before the war as an Anglophile married to an English woman. Can they, by a personal approach, persuade him to return to this country?
It's 1945, Burma, the day the war is over! For many this means they've survived and will be going home. But not for everyone. A Scottish soldier, Corporal Lachlan "Lachie" MacLachlan is the victim of a wound to the lower back on this day. He's moved to a M.A.S.H. unit and undergoes surgery. As time goes by he begins to recover and watches, in dismay as soldiers pack up and head for home.
Hardcastle, a man of substance, looks forward to acquainting his daughter with his old pal's son with a view to marriage. But thanks to playboy Lumpkin, he's mistaken by his prospective son-in-law Marlow for an innkeeper, his daughter for the local barmaid. The good news is, while Marlow can barely speak to a woman of quality he's a charmer with those of a different stamp.
It is November 1918 and the scene is the city of Kiev in the Ukraine, lately garrisoned by the German Army of Occupation but now threatened by the approach of a large well-equipped army of Cossacks. There's no ammunition and food is desperately short in the city. But still attempts are made to raise an army of citizens to repel the invaders. Describing the impact of the collapse of the Tsarist Empire on a family of officers, this play centres on Alexei Turbin, Colonel of the White Guard, responsible for defending Kiev, and on his beautiful sister Helena, deserted by her husband and in love with a young lieutenant, Leonid Schervinsky.